Agar calls for AU-supported meeting for Sudan’s opposition groups
July 5, 2019 (KHARTOUM) – Malik Agar, leader of an SPLM-N faction Friday called for an urgent meeting of the Forces for Freedom and Change under the auspices of the African Union to consolidate the unity of the Sudanese opposition and agree on issues of peace and democratic change in the country.
The call comes following attacks by the Sudanese Revolutionary Front led by Minni Minnawi (SRF-Minnawi) on its allies of the political opposition accusing them of marginalizing the armed movements and refusing to involve them in the negotiations with the military council.
“The unity of the components of the Forces for Freedom and Change, including the forces of the armed struggle, is of strategic importance for the full implementation of the program of the transitional period,” Agar said in a statement issued hours after an agreement on the transitional authority concluded by the FFC and the military junta.
He further said that the agenda of the meeting, which he proposed to hold in Addis Ababa, should form an FFC Leadership Council to replace the contested coordination as it does not include armed groups, members of the Sudan Call alliance.
The meeting, according to the statement, is also necessary to link democratic transition and just peace, he said, stressing that the “experiences have proved that there is no peace without democracy or democracy without peace”.
The FFC, in line with the agreement, has to form a transitional technocratic government tasked with economic and political reforms in the country and to prepare general elections that take place at the end of the transitional period.
Besides these issues, the rebel leader said there was a need to agree on comprehensive security arrangements, restructuring of the security and economic sectors, set-up the transitional period program and agree on the arrangements for the constitutional conference and determine its date.
He called on the African Union, which recognizes the forces of freedom and change and supervises the mediation between them and the military council, to facilitate the meeting and to host it at the headquarters of the Union in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.
“This meeting supports its decisions to achieve peace and democracy in Sudan and will bring together the forces of armed struggle with the peaceful civil forces in our country to support the agenda of transition, peace, democracy and regional stability,” he said.
(ST)