Sudan protests US criticism of Al-Bashir’s comments

April 30, 2011 (KHARTOUM) – Sudan on Saturday faulted criticism leveled by the US State Department at recent comments in which the country’s president Omer Al-Bashir threatened not to recognize South Sudan independence if the latter approves a draft constitution laying claims to the contested region of Abyei.

North and South Sudan have been at loggerhead over the central, oil-producing region of Abyei which straddles their tentative borders since a referendum to decide the status of the region failed to take place as planned in January due to disagreements over who can vote.

Another referendum held in January saw the South voting almost unanimously to secede from the north in July. The plebiscite was the final phase of the 2005’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) which ended more than two decades of north-south civil wars.

A draft copy of South Sudan constitution, as received by the media this week, has stated that Abyei belongs to the South, prompting Al-Bashir to threaten in a speech he delivered on Thursday in South Kordofan State that his government would re-consider its recognition of south Sudan independence if the latter approves its draft constitution as it currently stands.

“I say it and repeat it for the million times, Abyei is northern and will remain northern,” Al-Bashir said in his inflammatory speech.

The assistant secretary of state for African affairs at the US State Department, Johnnie Carson, on Friday deplored Al-Bashir’s comments, reminding both north and south Sudan of their obligation to finalize the implementation of the CPA.

“Those comments are not helpful at all, and they only serve to inflame and heighten tensions,” Carson said, adding that “It is important that both sides — those in Khartoum and those in Juba — focus intensely on trying to resolve the key issues that have not been completed under the CPA.”

The US official went on to stress that outstanding issues in CPA implementation, like Abyei, must be resolved before South Sudan’s Independence Day on July 9.

But the official spokesman of Sudan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Khalid Musa, on Saturday told the country’s official news agency SUNA that the US criticism had unfairly targeted north Sudan. He said the US Administration should be exerting pressure on the Government of South Sudan to drop the clause concerning Abyei from the draft constitution and not to show the region as a part of South Sudan.

“The US criticism should be first directed at the political behavior of [South Sudan’s ruling party, the Sudan People’s liberation] Movement which seeks to impose a unilateral administrative solution by annexing Abyei in the south’s constitution” Musa said. “This is a violation of the CPA, Sudan constitution and bilateral agreements.”

North and South Sudan are also engaged in negotiations to thrash out a wide-array of post referendum arrangements, including shares of oil revenues, Nile water, currency, external debts and citizenship.

(ST)