Sudanese minister : VP’s plane hasn’t been found

KHARTOUM, Sudan, July 31, 2005 (AP) — Vice President John Garang’s plane has not been found, contrary to earlier reports, Communications Minister Abdel-Basit Sabdarat said on state television Monday.

SPLAM/A Leader John Garang listen to national anthem in Rumbek on Wednesday June 8, 2004. (AP).

Garang, the former southern rebel leader who became Sudan’s vice president after a peace agreement, had been reported missing in bad weather Sunday on a flight from Uganda.

Late Sunday, state television interrupted its regular programming to say that Garang “has landed safely at a camp in southern Sudan.”

But in the early hours of Monday morning, Sabdarat went on television to deny such reports.

“Up to now we do not have any concrete new information about the whereabouts of the plane,” said Sabdarat, who is also the government spokesman.

Garang is a charismatic figure whose leadership is seen as key to ensuring the endurance of the peace agreement signed in January, which ended 21 years of war between the Khartoum government and the southern-based rebels whom he led. It is hoped that his role in the transitional government, which took office in July, could help bring peace to other volatile regions in Sudan, including Darfur.

Sabdarat also said the plane left Uganda on Saturday evening, contradicting earlier reports that it had gone missing on Sunday.

He said President Omar el-Bashir had ordered the Sudanese air force to search for the aircraft.

Ugandan army spokesman 2nd Capt. Dennis Musitwa said Sunday that Garang was on a helicopter which left Uganda on Saturday after he made a private visit to the country.

“They left yesterday in a Ugandan chopper,” Musitwa told The Associated Press. “What we know is that the aircraft got weather problems and crash-landed.”

“We have not established where they landed. They have not reached where they are supposed to reach, and we are trying to locate them,” he said.

But any suggestion of a crash was denied by a spokesman for Garang’s political party, Yasir Arman, who said in Nairobi, Kenya, that Garang was “safe and sound ” in southern Sudan. Arman declined to give further details Sunday.

Garang led the Sudan People’s Liberation Army in the war between the Muslim north and mainly Christian and animist south that ended with the signing of the peace pact, which provided a power sharing between the Khartoum government and Garang’s movement.

The settlement made Garang first vice president as well as president of southern Sudan, letting him set up an interim administration there until a referendum in six years’ time on secession.

In its earlier report, Sudanese television said Garang was heading to a former SPLA base called “Newsite” in southern Sudan when contact was lost with his aircraft.

El-Bashir clearly saw Garang as an important partner in sealing the peace, ensuring the south does not secede, and in repairing Sudan’s international reputation. With a speed stunning to many in Sudan, the Sudanese state media went from describing Garang in the darkest terms to respectively calling him “Dr. Garang” after the peace deal was struck.