South Africa’s Mbeki to visit Sudan Tuesday

June 18, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — The President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, is due to arrive here in Khartoum Tuesday in an official visit to press Khartoum to approve a U.N. takeover of an African Union peacekeeping operation and discuss peace implementation in Southern Sudan.

President Thabo Mbeki.

Mbeki would also press Khartoum to agree to an African Union proposal to allow the United Nations to take over from a 7,000-member AU force that is struggling to monitor a widely-ignored truce in Sudan’s western Darfur region.

The Director of the African Union Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Awad Mursi, said that Mbeki would hold talks with President AL-Bashir, on issues of mutual concern and implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) as well as the latest developments in the issue of Darfur.

Mbeki’s one-day visit would include talks with Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and First Vice-President Salva Kiir, who is also president of South Sudan, Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad said.

The talks between the two Presidents will also touch on the Sudanese – Chadian relations, as well as the situation at the border between the two countries, besides the implementation of Tripoli agreement and rehabilitation of the South.

Ambassador Mursi said that the visit of President Thabo Mbeki to Sudan comes as part of the mutual consultations between Sudan and South Africa prior the convocation of the African Summit in Gambia during July 1 – 2, in a view that South Africa is the chairman the African Council for Peace Security in current June, adding that the AU ministerial council would hold an important meeting on the sidelines of the African Summit in Gambia to discuss Darfur issue.

Ambassador Mursi said that South Africa also chairs an AU’s ministerial committee that would hold a meeting on the sideline of the African Summit to discuss the issue of rehabilitation and development.

Mbeki will hold talks during his visit with President of the Republic, Field Marshal Omer Al-Bashir, as well as the First Vice President, Salva Kiir.

President Thabo Mbeki would be accompanied by the South African Foreign Minister, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, Presidential Adviser for Legal Affairs, the Undersecretary for the Republic as well as the Director of East Africa and Horn of Africa Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

(ST)