Sudan govt, opposition alliance deal to help consolidate peace
NAIROBI, Jan 18, 2005 (IRIN) — The agreement signed by the Sudanese
government and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) on Sunday will
further consolidate the peace accord signed with the southern Sudan
People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) on 9 January, sources said.
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Sudanese artist in Juba drawing the Sudanese national flag over which a caption in Arabic reading ‘yes for peace and love’ while a small boy stands by observing in Juba, Sudan, Sunday, Jan 9, 2005. (AP).. |
The NDA, which is based in Eritrea, signed the tentative agreement with the government in the Egyptian capital, Cairo. It supports the southern peace agreement, backs the drafting of a new constitution and calls for the formation of a neutral, professional army.
“This is a positive development,” George Somerwill, deputy spokesperson of
the United Nations Advance Mission in Sudan (UNAMIS), told IRIN on
Tuesday. “At this time of great change for the people of Sudan, we welcome
any move that contributes to the consolidation of the peace in the
country.”
NDA spokesman Khatem Es-Sir also lauded the accord, and was quoted as
saying by AFP press agency that it “brings a practical solution to the
question of democratic change”.
The deal represents a framework for a comprehensive political solution
between the two sides. It aims to lift the state of emergency, which has
been in place since 1989, and to re-integrate the NDA into Sudan’s
political life.
The two sides also intend to set up a commission to re-integrate 3,000
armed fighters on the eastern Sudanese border with Eritrea, back into the
regular Sudanese forces.
Under the power-sharing agreement between the government and the SPLM/A,
52 percent of the government will be from the ruling National Congress
Party (NCP) and 28 percent from the SPLM/A, with other northern parties
taking 14 percent and other southerners 6 percent.
The Cairo agreement provides for the setting up of a committee on
political representation that will discuss the proportion of posts the NDA
will hold in the legislative and executive bodies during a transitional
period.
Apart from the SPLM/A, the other main group in the NDA is the Democratic
Unionist Party (DUP), one of the big traditional parties in the Arab
north.
Other NDA members include the Sudanese Communist Party, the Baath Party,
the Beja Congress from the east of Sudan, the Sudan Liberation
Movement/Army (SLM/A) from the western Sudanese region of Darfur and an
alliance of southern parties independent of the SPLM/A.
The agreement puts an end to 15 years of friction between the Khartoum
government and the opposition group headed by DUP chairman Mohamed Osman
al-Marghani, a key figure in modern Sudanese history and hereditary
spiritual guide – since 1968 – of the Khatmiyyah, the religious order upon
which DUP is based.
Al-Marghani is now expected to return to Khartoum after years in exile.
The NDA was established in 1989 following a coup in which Sudanese
president Omar el-Bashir overthrew Sudan’s last democratically elected
prime minister, Sadiq el-Mahdi.
The NDA is seen as a rival to the Al-Umma party of Sadek al-Mahdi –
Sudan’s legal opposition – and the outlawed Popular Congress of jailed
Islamist Hassan al-Turabi.
During the past 16 years, armed NDA members have fought alongside the
SPLM/A in the southern civil war, which left 2 million people dead, and
launched sabotage attacks and other low-level violence in Sudan’s north
and east in opposition to el-Bashir’s regime.
Talks between the NDA and the Sudanese government have taken place in
Cairo for months, in parallel with separate negotiations in Kenya with the
southern SPLM/A and in Abuja with two Darfur rebel groups.
Sunday’s reconciliation agreement will lead to the disarmament of the
NDA’s armed militias and bring Sudan a step closer to a nation-wide peace.
Ethnic Beja rebels from the eastern Sudan, however, boycotted the Cairo
talks.
A final agreement is expected to be signed on 12 February in Cairo.