Khartoum paper prints ‘nonsense’ on Blue Nile troop build-up, says SPLA
January 25, 2010 (RUMBEK) – The Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) Official Spokesman, Maj-Gen. Kuol Deim Kuol, today denied that the South Sudan army is building up forces in Blue Nile State. He was responding to a news article printed in Akhir Lahza.
Akhir Lahza claimed that the trucks were sent to support an 8,000-man force of the SPLA “so that they would be able to face the requirements of the coming phase.” The SPLA made deployments in the region of Khur al-Budi, supported with military vehicles, and other military forces deployed in the regions of Wadka, Al-Dim, and Yabus, said the paper.
“This is all nonsense,” said the SPLA spokesman in reply. “SPLA is not present in Blue Nile, all our troop are in Northern Upper Nile at Gupa — you see Sudan Armed Forces’s problem is that they mix up borders, and the fact is that the border is not demarcated.”
He suggested the problem was perhaps a matter of border demarcation and called upon the Khartoum government to demarcate the borders. “Where is the border between Upper Nile state and Blue Nile state demarcated?” he asked.
SPLA had agreed, in accordance with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), to redeploy its forces in Southern Blue Nile south of the 1956 north-south border. However, it was permitted to leave some forces in the state as part of the Joint Integrated Units, which were meant to number 6,000 in this state.
Until the election, Blue Nile’s state government, in both the executive and the legislature is supposed to be allocated 55 percent to the National Congress Party and 45 percent to the SPLM. This was set forth in the CPA.
The contested state is one of the “two areas” – the other being Southern Kordofan (Nuba Mountains) – which are sometimes cited as potential flashpoints.
Kuol said that Sudanese Army Forces (SAF) are building up their troops in Southern Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan, as well militias are been developed in the Abyei area under militia leader Thomas Chiliro. “We are looking at SAF activities at the undemarcated borders and SAF is trying to cover their full mistakes by rushing into media in Khartoum and that will be not solution. They are trying to cover their mistakes; it is the Sudanese army forces that are building up troops.”
This is not the first time that the SPLA spokesman has taken on the newspaper Akhir Lahza. In an interview last year in September, he slammed the newspaper, along with some other northern media outlets such as Akhbar Al-Youm, for “writing against South Sudan” and “falling under the influence of Northern military intelligence.”
(ST)
Reporting by Manyang Mayom