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Sudan: First vice-president, defence minister discuss Chad visit
BBC Monitoring Service – United Kingdom
Published: May 16, 2007

Excerpt from report by Sudanese radio on 16 May

First Vice-President of the Republic Lt-Gen Salva Kiir Mayardit has received in his office Minister of Defence Lt-Gen Abd al-Rahim Muhammad Husayn and Director of National Security and Intelligence Gen Salah Abdallah. The meeting discussed the outcome of the delegation’s visit to Ndjamena and the defence minister also briefed Kiir on his visit to Addis Ababa.

At the same time, Kiir met the EU envoy Torben Brylle in his office, to assess the situation in Darfur and how the Darfur Peace Agreement is being implemented. More details from our correspondent.

[Correspondent] The meetings of the First Vice-President of the Republic focused on ways to bring together the Abuja holdouts as the first step to finding a political solution that would lead to a lasting peace.

Lt-Gen. Abd-al-Rahim explained the outcome of the meeting.

[Abd-al-Rahim] “Actually we came to brief the First Vice-President of the Republic on the outcome of our visit to Ndjamena and Addis Ababa. We delivered a letter from the president of the republic to his Chadian counterpart President Idriss Deby. The letter was about the implementation of the Riyadh Agreement and other agreements that were signed in Tripoli. During the visit, we explained the steps that have been taken so far to implement the agreements and the government’s commitment to the implementation of these agreements.”

Chairman of the national unification commission FM Abd-al- Rahman Su’ar al-Dahab said that the First Vice-President of the Republic, Lt-Gen Salva Kiir Mayardit, supported all the initiatives aimed at reaching a lasting solution to the Darfur problem.

[Al-Dahab] We had a good meeting with the acting president Lt-Gen Salva Kiir, the first vice-president of the republic, who is now the acting president over the issue of national unification, which he supported fully. In fact, during my previous meetings with him in Juba and here he had assured us that he felt the Sudanese people had regarded this initiative as very important and they were eager to reach the aims sought for.”