Sudan deal only the start of ‘long march’ to peace: opposition

KHARTOUM, Jan 9 (AFP) — Sudanese opposition parties on Sunday praised the peace agreement signed between the government and southern rebels, but cautioned that peace must be comprehensive and accompanied by political reform.

Sudanese refugees celebrate in Nairobi after the signing of a peace accord between Khartoum and the southern rebels, Jan 9, 2005. (AFP).

The deal is the “start of the peace march …it is a start, not an end, and it is a long way between the two points,” said the deputy chairman of the opposition Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), Ali Mahmoud Hassanain.

Hassanain told AFP that the deal “does not achieve a comprehensive peace all over the Sudan. There is war going on in Darfur, there are grievances and demands in the north and centre… peace is achieved only by stopping the war everywhere in the Sudan.”

While peace appears to have descended on the south for the moment, fighting continues in the western Darfur province, where at least 70,000 people have been killed and about 1.6 million displaced, according to UN figures.

True peace can only be realised by addressing all the demands of the nation and by participation in peacemaking by the entire country, said Hassanain.

The Popular Congress party’s Shoura Council member Wisal al-Mahdi said the peace agreement showed the Sudanese people that they could live “in peace and friendship but must be accompanied by freedoms which are the fruit of peace.”

Mahdi said that the peace agreement should be followed by granting unrestricted freedoms to all opposition political parties.

“The state of emergency is still in force and the prisons are still full of political detainees,” said Mahdi, wife of Hassan al-Turabi, the jailed former mentor of President Omar al-Beshir.

She urged Beshir to deliver on a promise that he would lift the state of emergency as soon as the peace agreement is signed and detainees held under the state of emergency laws would automatically be released.

Turabi earlier this week was told by the constitutional court that he was detained under the state of emergency laws.

“We have not seen him for 50 days as the security turned down our numerous requests to visit him in Kober prison,” she said.

Mahdi complained that 70 members of the Popular Congress party “are still in detention and our offices all over the Sudan are closed down.”