Sudan, opposition hail accord as major step at reconciliation
KHARTOUM, Dec 5 (AFP) — The Sudanese government and the main opposition group hailed an accord they signed in Saudi Arabia as a major step toward reconciling the nation and ending a 20-year civil war, state media said.
The government and the umbrella National Democratic Alliance (NDA) signed the accord supporting existing peace negotiations with southern rebels and calling for a new democratic Sudan benefiting all political parties.
The NDA represents not just the southern rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army but many northern opposition parties, including the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), whose leader Mohammad Osman Mirghani also heads the NDA.
The official Al-Anbaa daily said Friday the deal was “an important historic step for ending the suffering of the Sudanese people,” one that promoted dialogue over war as a solution to the nation’s divisions.
The state-run Omdurman Radio quoted Sudanese First Vice President Ali Osman Taha as saying after the agreement was signed in Jeddah that the peace process “is spacious enough to include everyone.”
The transitional period that follows the signing of a peace agreement with the SPLA “will be devoted to unifying Sudanese ranks,” he said.
Mirghani had complained that northern opposition parties, some of whom joined the southern rebels in armed conflict with the Khartoum government, were excluded from the direct negotiations between the SPLA and the government in Kenya.
Mirghani was quoted as saying this is a “great day on which the nation is unified around the peace issue.”
“All NDA factions, including the SPLA, have mandated me to sign the agreement,” he said.
“The road for returning home has now been paved,” Mirghani said when asked whether or not he would return to Sudan after about 14 years of self-imposed exile spent in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Eritrea.
According to a copy of the agreement obtained by AFP, the two sides said the deal “emanates from our conviction that war does not resolve existing differences, and our will to reach a comprehensive political settlement and to achieve a national consensus to consolidate the peace process.”
The text said they support the peace process in Kenya and the “points of agreement that stipulate the unity of Sudan, the right to self-determination and the relationship between religion and state.”
Since 1983, a civil war has pitted the SPLA, representing mainly animists and Christians in the south, against successive Arab and Muslim governments in Khartoum, to the north.
“Citizenship is the basis of rights and duties without discrimination between the citizens on the religious, ethnic or political basis,” the text said.
It said the “the regime in Sudan must be democratic, multiparty, and presidential, and guaranteeing the peaceful change of power through free elections.”
Both sides agreed on the right of each of the nation’s states to elect its governor and its legislative council.”