Kiir skips Sudan People’s forum over presidential jet dispute
November 13, 2008 (KHARTOUM) – Sudan’s First Vice President Salva Kiir has reportedly refused to attend the closing session for the ‘People of Sudan Initiative’ because the presidential jet was not made available to carry him from Juba to Khartoum.
The daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat published in London said that the presidential place in Khartoum instead sent a commercial airline for Kiir to board.
Kiir’s absence from the forum yesterday prompted criticism from pro-government newspapers in Khartoum.
Some officials at the Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS) told the newspaper that Kiir had planned to attend but canceled it after consulting with his aides.
They further said that security and protocol arrangements have been made on the premise of having a presidential jet escort Kiir to the Sudanese capital.
One unidentified Southern official said that the incident “is an explicit provocation to the First Vice President…this is inappropriate treatment and disrespect to him”.
The official blamed the minister for presidential affairs Bakri Hassan Salih and the executive manager at the presidential palace.
“They [Salih and executive manager] tried to throw blame at a protocol officer but this is not his responsibility of course” the official said.
He also claimed that president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir was “infuriated by what happened” before adding that “this is the second time this occurs”.
But a leading figure at the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) said that two of three presidential jets were outside the country that day while the available one was undergoing technical maintenance.
GoSS received a private jet from South Africa in 2005 which was used briefly before being returned afterwards, the newspaper reported.
The 2005 peace agreement brokered by the US and other western countries ended two decades of civil war between the Arab and Muslim-dominated north and the mainly Christian and animist black southerners.
(ST)