Ugandan rebels not involved in Garang’s death – Mayardit

Excerpt from report by Sudanese news agency Suna website, by BBC Monitoring

Aug 23, 2005 (Rumbek) — The first vice-president and president of the southern government and leader of the SPLM [Sudan People’s Liberation Movement], Lt-Gen Salva Kiir Mayardit, has said that he presumes there are three reasons why Dr John Garang’s helicopter crashed at the end of last month.

Addressing a news conference in Rumbek town today, he said that they were three possibilities why the helicopter crashed. It could have been bad weather, technical faults or explosives planted aboard the plane.

He ruled out any [Ugandan] Lord’s Resistance Army [LRA] connection with this incident, saying that there were no LRA elements in the area where the plane crashed.

He said that the SPLM was waiting for the results from the national probe committee. He said no person could be accused when proper information and evidence were lacking, adding that any side that would be connected to this criminal act would be thoroughly punished.

Salva Kiir denied reports that there had been an extra body aboard the fateful plane. He said the intensity of the crash caused the body of the captain to be severed in half, leading to assumptions that there had been an extra body. [Passage omitted: Kiir naming officers who accompanied the late Garang]