Sudan abruptly cancels high level meeting with Egypt

October 7, 2010 (KHARTOUM) – The Egypt-Sudan joint supreme committee meetings scheduled to take place next week has been postponed indefinitely upon the request of Khartoum, according to a news report.

The Cairo-based Rosa-Al-Yousif newspaper said that the last minute cancellation frustrated lengthy preparatory work by the two sides and noted that this is the second incident of its kind since April.

The joint committee is headed by the Egyptian prime minister Ahmed Nazif on one side and Sudan 2nd Vice president Ali Osman Taha on the other. The committee sessions were going to be held both in Khartoum and South Sudan capital of Juba.

The report said that the Sudanese ambassador to Egypt Abdel-Rahman Sir Al-Khitim already travelled back home with a number of his advisers to put the final touches on the agenda of the meetings.

Parmena Makuet, the head of the Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS) liaison office in Cairo, told Rosa-Al-Yousif that preparations for the self-determination referendum is the reason for the postponement. Makuet further said that North-South negotiations on post-referendum arrangements is dominating the political scene in the country.

The referendum on southern independence is a key provision of a 2005 peace deal which ended a more than two-decade war between north and south Sudan, a conflict in which two million people were killed.

Most observers expect an overwhelming vote by Southerners for independence from the North driven by bitter memories of the civil war and feeling of marginalization by the Arab-Muslim dominated North.

(ST)