Ethiopia will push for Sudan peace implementation – PM
November 27, 2007 (ADDIS ABABA) – Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, said his country will scale up its contribution for the full implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed between the Sudan and the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM).
During a meeting on Tuesday with the former Kenyan president and Kenya’s special peace envoy to Sudan, Daniel Arap Moi, Zenawi said Ethiopia has been playing its role for the CPA implementation signed between the Sudanese government and the SPLM in 2005.
Ethiopia is closely following the implementation of the peace agreement, Meles said, adding that it will pursue in providing positive contributions along with other neighbors.
He said Ethiopia provides all assistance for the efforts being made to ensure durable peace and stability in neighboring Sudan.
Kenya which chairs the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the mediator of the CPA, is working to hold a meeting for the IGAD countries on the CPA implementation. On Monday 19 November Moi met with the Ugandan president Museveni on the same issue.
The IGAD, comprising Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda, led world efforts in mediating a 2005 accord that halted a 21-year conflict in the south which claimed 1.5 million lives and displaced four million people.
Moi for his part said Ethiopia has been providing assistance for the implementation of the CPA, the official ENA reported.
Kiir, first vice president of Sudan’s national unity government, and his Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement pulled out of Khartoum on October 11 on the grounds that the implementation of the CPA had stalled.
Sudan was at war between 1955 and 1972 when regional and Church leaders mediated a deal in Addis Ababa. But lapses in its implementation brought the foes back to war in 1983, wreaking destruction mainly in southern Sudan.
(ST)