Annan stresses Sudan’s national unity with solution to Darfur, eastern conflicts

KHARTOUM, July 9, 2005 (Xinhua) — The United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said here Saturday that Sudan’s national unity is yet incomplete unless conflicts in Darfur and eastern Sudan are settled.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan delivers a speech during the swearing-in ceremony of Sudan’s new presidency and adoption of the new constitution in the capital Khartoum July 9, 2005. (Reuters).

Annan made the remarks at the sworn-in ceremony of Sudan’s new presidency. Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir was re-sworn-in at a regional and international presence earlier, before he supervised the sworn-in procedure of John Garang and Ali Othman Taha as first and second vice presidents.

Annan told the Sudanese that “the peace process between north and south must be made ever better and it will not be unless it takes place in the east and in the west as well.”

He urged that the interim national unity government must ensure that peace extends to the whole nation of Sudan, adding the peace must be brought home and implemented within Sudan after the culmination of a long peace mission efforts that was carried on

mainly out of Sudan. As an immediate priority, therefore, the government of national unity must work to resolve the conflicts of Darfur and eastern Sudan, stressed the UN top official.

Annan noted that the humanitarian crisis in Darfur have been contained but not resolved, urging all the Sudanese, north and south, east and west, to come together to generate partnership in the interim period for the good of the whole country.

All armed groups that have not yet joined the national process of unity as well as all political parties should join hand to make peace a reality through non-violence and democracy, he said.

According to the new interim constitution signed and approved by the new council of presidency before the sworn-in ceremony, an interim government of national unity will take office in August.

Garang, ex-southern rebel leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), arrived here Friday afternoon for the first time after two decades of civil war.

The Sudanese government under President al-Bashir and Garang’s SPLM signed a peace deal on Jan. 9 in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, putting a final seal on two decades of the civil war, also the longest one in Africa.