South Sudan Salva Kiir: Peace deal isn’t working
Jan 9, 2007 (JUBA) — The president of southern Sudan said Tuesday a 2005 peace deal ending the 21-year civil war between Sudan’s Muslim government in the north and the mostly Christian rebels in the south isn’t working.
“Serious problems remain to be solved,” Salva Kiir said at a ceremony that drew thousands of people, including Omar al-Bashir, the president of Sudan, and other dignitaries to mark the second anniversary of the deal.
He cited November clashes between Sudanese government forces and ex-rebels from the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in Malakal, which killed more than 130 people and wounded 400.
“The first dividend of peace is security and development,” which so far has not been achieved, Kiir said, adding al-Bashir’s administration could have stopped the violence.
Al-Bashir denied his government was to blame for problems with the peace deal.
“As commander in chief, I am telling you…we have no relationship with militias,” he said. He closed his speech by saying “God is Great” and hallelujah, a nod to both the Muslims who predominate in the north and the Christians of the south.
Officials said Monday Sudan would introduce a new currency this week, replacing the Sudanese dinar with a new Sudanese pound as part of the peace deal. The change will occur Wednesday, but Sudanese will have a transitional period until July 1, when dinars will no longer be accepted, said Sabir Mohamed Al Hassan, governor of the Sudanese Central Bank. Many had seen the dinar as representative of the Muslim government, and the peace agreement stipulated the new currency would be free of religious and ethnic symbols.
Under the 2005 peace deal, former SPLM rebels were given some key positions in the northern government, and both sides agreed to share oil revenues.
But the situation in Malakal and other towns close to the north-south boundary has remained volatile. Located in the Upper Nile state close to some of Sudan’s richest oil fields, Malakal lies on the Nile River, 645 kilometers south of Khartoum, the capital.
Government officials accuse former rebel fighters of banditry, both in Khartoum where they often serve as bodyguards for southern officials and in the largely lawless south.
Al-Bashir has been isolated internationally over Darfur, a western region embroiled in unrelated violence, Al-Bashir has resisted intense global pressure to allow 20,000 U.N. peacekeepers into Darfur to replace an underpowered African Union force of 7,000 troops.
Sudanese troops and Arab tribal militia known as the janjaweed have been fighting Darfur’s ethnic African rebels, who revolted against what they saw as decades of neglect and discrimination by the Khartoum government. More than 200,000 people have been killed, and U.S. President George Bush has labeled it a genocide.
Kenya’s foreign minister said at Tuesday’s ceremony that troubles in Somalia, where Islamic militants had seized control before Ethiopia helped the government drive them out, also have distracted the region from southern Sudan.
(AP)