SPLM delegation to arrive in Khartoum Wednesday

KHARTOUM, March 29, 2005 (Xinhua) — The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) will send a delegation to Khartoum on Wednesday prior to implementation of a peace agreement it signed with the government in January, the Sudanese News Agency (SUNA) reported on Tuesday.

According to the report, the 100-member delegation headed by SPLM’s Secretary General James Wani will arrive in Khartoum from Tripoli on a special Libyan plane.

The delegation will participate in joint committees with the Sudanese government to arrange for the interim period.

It will inaugurate SPLM’s main office in Khartoum prior to practicing its political activities inside Sudan and in preparation for participating in Sudan’s governance during the interim period.

The delegation will also visit Sudan’s southern states and the ” three areas of dispute” of Abyei, the Blue Nile and the Nuba Mountains, said the report.

The Sudanese government signed a comprehensive peace deal with the SPLM in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi on Jan. 9 to end a 22- year civil war between them.

The deal covers all the eight peace deals signed previously, including earlier agreed protocols on how to share power and natural wealth, what to do with armed forces during a six-year interim period, how to administer three disputed areas, and the latest on permanent ceasefire and modalities of implementing peace deals.

Civil war in southern Sudan started in 1983 when the SPLM took up arms fighting for self-determination in the southern part of the country, which has reportedly left some two million people dead, mostly through war-induced famine and disease.