Sudan new govt: 29 ministers, 32 state ministers and 12 adviser
Sept 20, 2005 (KHARTOUM) — Sudanese national unity government was 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).
A senior member of President Omar al-Beshir’s National Congress Party (NCP) read the names of his movement’s ministers during a press conference.
The full line-up was announced a few moments later on television.
The unwieldy unity government includes 29 ministers, 32 state ministers and 12 advisers.
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 energy and mining ministry was retained by the NCP’s Awad Ahmed al-Jaz but the foreign ministry was for the first time granted to a southerner, senior SPLM official Lam Akol.
Many of the key jobs remained under control of the former ruling party, such as defence, justice and interior.
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 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.
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)