INTERVIEW-Sudan’s Garang must listen or risk war – ex-rebel

By Opheera McDoom

KHARTOUM, Nov 24 (Reuters) – Sudan rebel leader John Garang must listen to other southerners or they will turn against him and that could risk reigniting Africa’s longest running war, a prominent former rebel leader warned.

General Joseph Lago during a press conference at the Sudanese media centre in Khartoum. (photo SMC).

Garang is due to sign a final peace deal by the end of the year between his Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) and the central Islamist government.

Former rebel leader Joseph Lagu signed an agreement in 1972, and later became vice president. The deal heralded an 11-year break in the civil war in south Sudan.

Lagu accused Garang of failing to talk to other southern leaders while leading negotiations with the government and said Garang’s quest for personal power meant he was neglecting his duty as the leader of the southern people.

“The southerners must come together before even starting meaningful dialogue with the north and he (Garang) has been opposing all this,” he told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.

“The (southern) forces that are opposed to Garang are more than his SPLM/SPLA. Those people will crush him and … if Garang doesn’t listen to the others I will be with those people,” said Lagu who remains influential in the south.

TRIBAL POLITICS

Ethnic politics are deeply entrenched in Sudan, a country with hundreds of tribes.

Northern riverine tribes have dominated power in Sudan since independence from Britain in 1956 and analysts say the SPLM/A’s leadership largely consists of Garang’s tribe, the Dinka.

Lagu, from the main southern city of Juba, said the situation had to change or Sudan would fall apart.

“You, the north … you kept all the important positions to yourselves and give others of the periphery minor jobs.”

He cited a rebellion in western Darfur and trouble in eastern Sudan as evidence that central control had to change.

Lagu led what is widely considered the SPLM/A’s precursor, the Anya Nya movement.

Sudan’s southern conflict, in which 2 million people have died, broadly pits the mainly Christian, animist south against the central Khartoum government. It is complicated by issues of oil, ethnicity and ideology.

Lagu said the warring parties would sign a peace deal, not least because they had reached a “point of no return” in negotiations.

Under that deal, Garang should become first vice president. Lagu, second vice president under the first southern peace deal, is in Khartoum ahead of a possible signing and said he did not rule out joining a post-peace government.