SPLM’s northern sector accused of inciting U.S to wage war on Sudan
April 24, 2011 (KHARTOUM) – North Sudan’s ruling national congress party (NCP) has accused the northern sector of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) of inciting the U.S to wage a new war on the country.
Al-Tahir claimed that the SPLM had requested the U.S assistance in waging a new war on Sudan, and stressed that his party would not allow the SPLM to complete its plot.
A delegation of the SPLM-northern sector had recently visited Washington where the party’s secretary-general, Yasir Arman, reportedly called on the U.S Administration not to lift the economic sanctions it has been imposing on Sudan since 1997 unless the government of president Al-Bashir demonstrates commitment to democratic transformation.
Arman’s statement sparked fury in Khartoum where the spokesman of the country’s foreign minister Khalid Musa told reporters last month that Arman’s call constitutes “a breach of national agendas and principles.”
The SPLM is the ruling party in South Sudan which massively voted to secede from the north in a referendum held in January as part of the 2005’s deal which ended decades of north-south civil wars in 2005.
In the same public rally, the NCP’s incumbent candidate for gubernatorial elections in South Kordofan State, Ahmad Harun, criticized the “new Sudan project” advocated by the SPLM’s northern sector, describing it is a “racist and separatist” ideology.
Harun, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of war crimes allegedly committed during a government counterinsurgency campaign in the country’s westernmost region of Darfur, has also been accused by the SPLM of standing behind the incidents of violence which occurred this month in the state’s village of El-feid, where the paramilitary Popular Defense Forces (PDF) killed at least 17 people and burned hundreds of houses.
The incidents come ahead of the May 2 legislative and gubernatorial elections in South Kordofan, which failed to hold them when Sudan organized countrywide elections in 2010 due to disagreements over the 2008 census and delimitation of geographic constituencies.
The two frontrunners for the state governor office, Harun and Abdul Aziz Adam Al-Hilu of the SPLM, have been actively campaigning since the Khartoum-based National Elections Commission (NEC) announced the beginning of electoral campaigns period on April 4.
In a separate development, the SPLM’s candidate Al-Hilu urged South Sudan president Salva Kiir to release citizens of South Kordofan’s who were arrested during the recent fighting in Unity State between the south’s army and militia groups allegedly backed by Khartoum.
In a letter to Kiir seen by Sudan Tribune, Al-Hilu accused unnamed bodies of turning South Kordofan citizens from cattle-herders into soldiers for southern militias.
(ST)