Sudan Catholic Church urges leaders to end political crisis
October 19, 2007 (JUBA) — The president of the Sudan Catholic Bishops Conference has called on national leaders to end the current political impasse that has heightened tension in the country, and focus on the common good of all citizens.
Archbishop Paulino Lokudu Loro of Juba urged the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the National Congress Party (NCP) to listen to God as they implement the peace agreement that ended the 21-year civil war in 2005.
“As religious leaders we call on the two parties to fear God and to look into their conscience. God is talking to their conscience,” Archbishop Lokudu said on the Juba-based Catholic station, 91 FM Bakhita Radio.
“All we need is the good, the happiness and the peace of the Sudanese people. The two parties should work in such a way that the Sudanese people both in the North and in the South are happy,” he added.
There has been a crisis in Sudan since Oct. 11 when the SPLM recalled to Juba all of its ministers and presidential advisers serving in the Government of National Unity to pressure the NCP to implement the protocols signed between the two parties.
The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was signed in Kenya on Jan. 9, 2005, to put an end to the bloodiest civil war in Africa. The conflict killed over two million people and displaced another four million. The CPA provides the blue print for the peace process in Sudan.
Archbishop Lukudu said he believed that the decision of the SPLM to withdraw its ministers was to evaluate and push forward implementation of the CPA.
He urged the SPLM and the NCP to sit together with the international community to evaluate the pact, adding that religious leaders did not expect the two parties to go back to war because the Sudanese people want peace. “We ask them [the leaders] to sit down in a very serious way and to try to read the signs of the times after two years [of the peace agreement] with the support of everybody who is ready to help the Sudan.”
The SPLM and NCP leaders have met in Khartoum on various occasions this month to iron out differences over the CPA.
Some of the issues under discussion are demarcation of the borders between the North and the South -which implementation was due on the first half of 2005), withdrawal of Sudanese forces from the South, the Abyei protocol, transparency in oil revenue sharing and democratic transformation.
(Catholic Information Service for Africa)