Sudan VP Kiir to visit USA on 5 January
By Daniel Van Oudenaren
December 23, 2008 (WASHINGTON) — The President of Southern Sudan government, Salva Kiir Mayardit, who is also the First Vice President of the Republic of Sudan, will make an official visit to the United States from January 5-7, 2009.
“America is our friend and we very much need our strong collaborative working arrangement with the U.S. to continue if the war in Darfur is ever to end, and if the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and its goal of democratic transformation in Sudan is to be fulfilled. That is why I am coming to Washington,” said the president of Southern Sudan.
President Salva Kiir Mayardit has headed the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) since his predecessor Dr. John Garang died in a helicopter crash in July 2005. The SPLM is the ruling party of Southern Sudan and fought the northern government for 21 years before winning a share of national power in the CPA agreement of January 2005.
The SPLM chairman aims to cement his ties with outgoing President George W. Bush, whose administration had a significant role in brokering the 2005 peace agreement, while forming a partnership with the incoming leadership team amid fears that Barack Obama’s advisors will be intent on focusing only on the crisis in Darfur, Sudan’s westernmost region.
The visit is intended “to demonstrate the need South Sudan and its allies throughout Sudan feel to establish an early and solid partnership with the incoming President Elect Barack Obama’s administration” said the Government of Southern Sudan (GOSS) Mission to the USA in a statement on Tuesday.
Southern leaders tend to view the U.S. in light of the major humanitarian role that it played during the north-south war and its similar role in post-war reconstruction of infrastructure and preparations for national elections. But they are also concerned about potentially ebbing U.S. support for implementation of the CPA:
“The political realities inside Sudan are that the crisis in Darfur drags on, the CPA is being undermined by Khartoum and is at serious risk and that Sudan’s President Omar Beshir is the only sitting President to face charges by the International Criminal Court in the Hague,” said the GOSS Mission.
Though the U.S. appears unlikely to ease pressure on the National Congress Party, which came to power in a military coup in 1989, the SPLM sits in a ambiguous position with Washington, being both a partner of Sudan’s ruling party and its historic nemesis. “Khartoum’s actions risk Sudan getting worse before it gets better,” said the statement, signed by Ezekiel Lol Gatkuoth, Head of Mission.
Referring to Darfur, which borders on the southern states of Bahr el Ghazal, Gatkuoth explained that the Southern government shares the U.S. goal of ending the conflict. He said that SPLM and the Southern government “pursued a series of initiatives to help bring peace to Darfur,” noting that President Kiir “continued to offer 10,000 Sudan Peoples Liberation Army soldiers as peacekeepers in Darfur, an offer Khartoum continues to reject.”
The South’s capital, Juba, has hosted talks among several minor Darfur rebel factions, though these efforts disintegrated and resulted in charges of impartiality. Thus far the major rebel groups have not committed to any form of political process with the government. But a senior SPLM delegation did travel to Chad and Darfur in October to meet with Khalil Ibrahim, the chairman of the Justice and Equality Movement.
Kiir is also expected to meet UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon about the current situation in Sudan, touching on CPA implementation, Darfur and the International Criminal Court, whose prosecutor is seeking to arrest Sudanese President Omer Al-Bashir on ten counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
(ST)
Lokorai
Sudan VP Kiir to visit USA on 5 January
Mr. Dictator, how would you preach democratic transformation in the US when you turn your own autonomous region to family affair? God will teach you a lesson!