INTERVIEW-UN sees joint investigation into Garang’s death

By Opheera McDoom

CAIRO, Aug 2 (Reuters) – The United Nations has offered to help investigate the cause of the helicopter crash which killed former southern Sudanese rebel leader and First Vice President John Garang, Sudan’s top U.N. envoy said on Tuesday.

Hundreds of Sudanese and foreigners gather in Khartoum,Tuesday Aug. 2, 2005 to offer their condolences for the death of John Garang. (AP) .

Jan Pronk said Garang’s death, announced on Monday, was a setback to a peace deal that ended Africa’s longest civil war, but the speedy transition of power was a positive sign that the former rebel group could stay united without Garang.

Garang’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the mainly Arab government in Khartoum signed a peace deal in January that ended the 21-year long civil war.

“There will be an investigation … we have offered our assistance so that may result in a joint investigation,” Pronk told Reuters by telephone from the capital Khartoum.

“Uganda, the SPLM, the government, the U.N., we need to group all our expertise … it is necessary in order to take away all suspicion if there are suspicions,” he added.

Garang, who just three weeks ago became Sudan’s vice-president in a peace deal hailed as a rare success for the continent, was killed when a Ugandan helicopter he was travelling in went down in bad weather at the weekend.

There has been no suggestion of foul play.

News of his death prompted thousands of southern Sudanese resident in Khartoum to riot, loot and burn in violence not seen in the capital for years. At least 36 people were killed and more than 100 hospitalised in Monday’s clashes.

ANGER AND FRUSTRATION

Pronk said the violence was an expression of rage and frustration by people whose hopes were raised by Garang’s return to Khartoum to join the new power-sharing government after more than two decades in exile.

“They are angry and frustrated and that leads to violence … it is not political or sectarian, it’s a riot,” Pronk said. “It will perhaps take a few days but then it will be over.”

He said pockets of violence in Khartoum on Tuesday were retaliation by those targeted during the previous day’s riots.

“I do not exclude that it will happen again in the future,” he said, blaming the poverty in which millions of marginalised Sudanese refugees live in slums surrounding the capital.

The SPLM on Monday named Garang’s deputy, Salva Kiir, as its new head. Officials from the group said he had widespread backing and would take Garang’s position of first vice president in Sudan’s new government.

Pronk said the quick announcement showed Kiir had the support of tribal factions within the movement, which some analysts had said could initiate a leadership crisis following Garang’s death.

“The fact that they appointed him right away means that they accept him, otherwise there would have been a discussion.”

The civil war broadly pitted the Islamist Khartoum-based government against the mainly Christian and animist south, and was complicated by issues of oil, ethnicity and ideology. It claimed more than 2 million lives.

The peace deal included giving southerners the right to vote on secession after a six-year interim period and also shared out Sudan’s oil wealth between north and south roughly equally.

However, other rebel groups are still fighting the government in the east and western Darfur region of the country.

U.S. officials had hoped Garang would help end the Darfur rebellion, which has killed tens of thousands and forced around 2 million from their homes.