South Sudan parliament backs public mobilisation against external aggression

April 11, 2012 (JUBA) – South Sudan said on Wednesday it would allow members of the two houses to go into recess in order to help in the public sensitisation and mobilisation against what it described as “external aggression”.

During a debate on the national election bill on Wednesday at the National Assembly, speaker of the assembly, James Wani Igga, said the house would allow members go on recess during this period of conflict in the borderlands between north and South Sudan.

Igga told members to return to their constituencies to “sensitise and mobilise our people” with regards to the deteriorating security situation.

“We know that the government in Khartoum has launched war in multiple points. It is not only in areas around Unity state. They have decided to fight us on multiple fronts”, Igga told the house, without specifying the regions.

He claimed South Sudan was acting in self-defence, against aggression from Khartoum’s forces.

Onyoti Adigo, leader of the opposition group in the parliament said it was time for the House to come together in order to draft a resolution condemning the attack on the South Sudan territories. He said that this should be done before going into recess.

Adagio expressed his opposition to waiting for an official briefing from the executive and quoted a provision in the country’s transitional constitution that allows the house to suspend a debate in progress in order to attend to an urgent matter of the national interest.

Amid applause from the House, Adagio said doing so would “raise the moral of the army and our people”.

The Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) deputy chief of general staff, Mboto Mamur Mate, said in a separate interview with Sudan Tribune on Wednesday from Bentiu, the capital of Unity state, that he will remain there until the “foreign forces” had been removed.

He added that SPLA troops would advance into areas “compromised in the past”.

Unity state’s information minister, Gideon Gatpan, said on Wednesday that the SPLA are heading north of Heglig, to the 1956 border – as demaracted by the British-Egyptian colonial power.

Deputy head of the SPLA’s military intelligence, Mac Paul, described the morale of the army as “very high” and explained that they had been ordered to stand their ground, rather than advance.

Philip Aguer, spokesman for the SPLA said the army had not entered Sudanese territory, but that they remained within the territory of South Sudan. He also said that Khartoum’s Sudan Armed Force (SAF) had operated with “Khartoum backed militias”.

Aguer said that SAF had been bombing the Heglig region throughout Wednesday.

(ST)