Sudan announces national unity government
Sept 20, 2005 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan’s unity government was partially announced Tuesday, after weeks of bitter wrangling and eight months after the January peace agreement that ended 21 years of civil war in Africa’s largest country.
The formation of Sudan’s first national unity government is a major step in implementing the peace deal signed by the regime in Khartoum and the former southern rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM).
“This government is a good omen and represents the will of the Sudanese people to establish peace and consolidate national unity,” President Omar al-Beshir said on national television.
A senior member of Beshir’s National Congress Party (NCP) read the names of his movement’s ministers during a press conference and said that the full cabinet line-up would be announced by the president himself later Tuesday.
The interim government will remain in place until legislative elections are held in around four years. A six-year post-war interim rule started in July, after which the south will hold a referendum on self-determination.
Among the appointments, the much coveted oil ministry was handed to the ruling northern party but the foreign ministry was for the first time granted to a southerner.
Awad Ahmed al-Jaz of the NCP retains the energy mining ministry.
The government was formed in line with quotas provided by the January 9 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which grants the NCP a 52-percent share of power.
According to the same power-sharing agreement, the SPLM of First Vice President Salva Kiir has 28 percent, the northern opposition 14 percent and the southern opposition six percent.
The government was supposed to have been in place by August 9, but its formation was also disrupted by the death in a July 30 helicopter crash of the historical southern leader John Garang, whom Salva Kiir succeeded.
Negotiations over the distribution of portfolios had also stumbled on the issue of oil wealth, with both the NCP and SPLM refusing to relinquish the crucial energy and mining portfolio to the other.
Sudan currently has a crude output of more than 300,000 barrels per day and aims to reach the half-million mark by the end of the year.
Several major movements will not be represented in the national unity government, among them the Popular Congress of Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi and the Umma party of Sadeq al-Mahdi.
In a bid to abide by the quotas while maintaining the fractious country’s fragile ethnic and political balance, each ministry will be represented by a minister and a state minister.
The war that raged for 21 years between the Arab Muslim northern regime and the mainly black Christian south left up to two million people dead and twice as many displaced.
(AFP/ST)