Salav Kiir vows to form S. Sudan government before constitution

Oct 20, 2005 (JUBA) — South Sudan will not wait for its constitution to be approved by Khartoum before forming a government, a vital move towards the reconstruction of the devastated land, southern Sudan’s president said on Thursday.

Salva Kiir, the president of south Sudan and head of the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), declined to say when he would name the heads of more than 20 ministries the southern administration announced this week.

But he promised it would happen before the constitution, still being discussed in the southern parliament, was approved by the Sudanese government’s Justice Ministry.

“We will not wait for that. We will have to put in place a caretaker government until when the constitution is out, then that government will be confirmed. So it will not take a couple of weeks again,” Kiir told Reuters.

“The formation of the government of south Sudan will be soon.”

That is a key step for south Sudan under a landmark peace agreement signed in January, which ended a 21-year civil war pitting the mainly black and Christian south against the Arab-dominated Muslim government of the north.

The peace deal, which ended what was then Africa’s longest-running civil war, was expected to open the way for the development of the south.

But the death of former SPLM leader John Garang in a helicopter crash in July, which led to Kiir’s ascension, and other factors have held back progress.

DELAYED RECONSTRUCTION

While businesses have begun to pour into the region on the promise of a vast new market, infrastructure and basic government services have yet to materialise.

In the southern capital, Juba, there is only one tarmac road, blighted by potholes, a fact Kiir was quick to point out in showing how progress had stalled.

“We have not yet started even to do anything in the south. There is no rebuilding in the south because nothing was built, actually. So we are starting from scratch and starting from scratch needs a lot of resources,” Kiir said.

He chided donors for delaying the delivery of $4.5 billion in reconstruction aid promised at a conference in Norway earlier this year.

“All of the pledges made in Oslo have not materialised. People were talking about $4 billion and that money has not yet come. We still look forward to those countries who made those commitments to deliver what they pledged,” Kiir said.

Many of those pledges hinge on adherence to the peace agreement, and an integral part of that is the formation of a government in the South. A number of crucial committees, including one to oversee the 40,000-member joint armed force combining SPLA and Sudanese government soldiers, also must be formed.

Kiir said the northern government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir was responsible for much of the delay.

“There must be blame. Somebody has to be blamed, and I think the presidency has to be blamed, because there are issues that should have been addressed by presidential decrees. The president did not take action for some reasons that are known to him,” Kiir said.

(Reuters)