Sudan’s Bashir rejects SPLM calls for outside help to end CPA crisis

October 23, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on Tuesday rejected an appeal by southern ex-rebels for outside help to end a crisis sparked by their withdrawal from government over the non-application of a peace deal.

“The call to resolve the crisis through regional and international mechanisms boils down to a rejection” of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended Africa’s longest running civil war, Bashir said.

His words came after Sudan People’s Liberation Movement leader Salva Kiir — a former rebel who became first vice president under the terms of the CPA — appealed to the international community for help to end the crisis.

“I am launching a special appeal to countries in the region and to the countries of the world to save the CPA,” said Kiir, whose SPLM pulled out of Sudan’s unity government on October 11.

The SPLM’s withdrawal from the cabinet plunged north-south relations into their worst crisis since the two became political partners.

But in a televised speech marking the start of a new parliament session, Beshir insisted on his readiness to “apply all of the CPA” and called on the SPLM to go back on its decision.

Southern involvement in government is “the best guarantee that the CPA will be applied,” he said.

“No one has the right to veto the agreement,” he said of the SPLM, which has accused Beshir’s ruling National Congress party of failing to implement key provisions of the CPA.

SPLM secretary general Pagan Amum on Monday called for a speedy UN Security Council meeting to discuss the stalled implementation of the deal, which took 11 years to hammer out.

“We call on the UN to organise an urgent meeting in the Security Council to review the (accord) and for both parties to report on the implementation,” Amum said in the southern capital Juba.

The group has complained that hardline elements within Beshir’s party are stalling on implementing the CPA.

Beshir was meeting African Union chief Alpha Oumar Konare on Tuesday after he arrived in Khartoum on an unannounced visit.

“Mr. Konare is currently in talks with the Sudanese leaders over the general situation in the country,” AU spokesman Noureddine Mezni told AFP.

In a statement on Wednesday, Konare had urged all parties to the CPA to “take all steps required to address the outstanding issues and ensure the successful implementation of the CPA, in both letter and spirit, in order to promote a lasting peace in the Sudan.”

The SPLM’s key gripes include the failure of northern troops to redeploy from the south, equitable sharing of earnings from the disputed oil district of Abyei and the demarcation of an eventual north-south border.

While the peace deal called on Khartoum to pull out its soldiers from the south by July 9, the ex-rebels say the north continues to reinforce troop numbers near oil fields in the south.

The only southern demand yet satisfied since the crisis erupted was a much-delayed cabinet reshuffle that saw the removal of foreign minister Lam Akol, viewed by the south as too close to Beshir’s party and as a defender of government actions in the troubled western region of Darfur.

Kiir is due to meet Beshir on Wednesday for a second round of talks, nearly a week after their first meeting to end the stand-off ended without agreement.

At least 1.5 million people were killed and four million displaced in the civil war between the Muslim north and mainly Christian and animist south that erupted in 1983.

(AFP)