EU’s Solana says onfident of Sudan unity
Oct 8, 2005 (KHARTOUM) — The European Union foreign policy chief said he was confident Sudan was executing a southern peace deal after his first meeting with a new coalition government on Saturday.
Javier Solana met First Vice President Salva Kiir, successor to John Garang was killed in a helicopter crash three weeks after taking office following the January peace deal.
Some analysts had feared Kiir, previously a secessionist, would reject Garang’s vision of a unified Sudan, a charge Kiir has denied.
The southern deal enshrines wealth and power sharing, democratic transformation and a southern referendum on secession after six years.
“My feelings are very constructive and very positive,” Solana said after meeting Kiir. “The disappearance of Dr. Garang … made things a little bit more difficult in the beginning but he (Kiir) has committed himself to do it (implementation).”
“He feels himself not only a man from the south … but also a Sudanese who wants to construct a Sudan which is prosperous and united. And that’s the most important thing we had to hear from him,” Solana told reporters.
The EU is among biggest donors of humanitarian and development aid to Sudan.
Solana is there to review the deal’s implementation and the separate conflict in the troubled western Darfur region, not covered by the agreement.
He will travel to Darfur to visit one of the camps for the more than 2 million displaced by that conflict. Darfur peace talks have faltered as violence escalated in recent weeks.
The autonomous southern Sudanese government is due to be formed this week. On Saturday, a spokesman for the largest southern militia opposed to Kiir’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), said it had agreed with the movement to participate in government and form joint military units.
The pro-government South Sudan Defence Forces (SSDF) say they have about 50,000 fighters. They fought the SPLM during than two decades of civil war in the south.
The war claimed 2 million lives and was fought over the imposition of Islamic sharia law on the mostly Christian or animist south; division of oil wealth; ethnicity and differences in ideology.
(Reuters)