SPLM/A leader to tour Europe for talks on Sudan’s problems

KHARTOUM, Sep 13, 2004 (Al-Ayyam) — The leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), Dr John Garang, is to conclude his long visit to the USA this week and head for Europe.

The SPLM spokesman, Yasir Arman, said Dr Garang would go to Europe to visit a number of countries, including Italy and Britain.

Speaking to Al-Ayyam on telephone from Nairobi, he said Dr Garang would after his tour to both the USA and Europe visit a number of other important regional capitals, which he refused to disclose, for more talks on the current situation. He also said that Garang would, in his talks, focus on breaking the deadlocked peace process.

Arman said the SPLM still believes there is still a way out of the acute national crisis. He said this can be achieved by reaching a peace agreement and entering into the transitional period through new arrangements by setting up a broad-based government of national unity that would bring about a national consensus.

He further said the SPLM believes the agreement reached in Naivasha on power and wealth sharing, and democratic change, particularly the two agreements on the Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile regions, should form a model for resolving conflicts, injustice and marginalization in eastern and western Sudan, as well as in Sudan as a whole.

He said a democratic transformation and peaceful alternation of power through the mechanism which was proposed at Naivasha, starting with the elections, would be the start of a national consensus and political participation. “Any other way would only perpetuate the crisis facing the country,” he concluded.

Translated By the BBC Monitoring Service