SUDAN-POLITICS: Peace Talks Cloaked in Secrecy

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Oct 31 1997 (IPS) - Talks aimed at solving Sudan’s 14-year armed conflict were held here this week, but there was little information on the discussions.

The negotiations between the Sudanese government and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) took place behind close doors at a secret location, Kenyan foreign ministry officials said.

Kenya’s Foreign Minister Kalonzo Musyoka, who mediated the talks, urged the belligerents at an opening ceremony on Wednesday to put aside their differences and to try to reach a negotiated settlement to one of Africa’s longest civil wars.

“Both parties are expected to demonstrate goodwill and agree on a political settlement that will enable the people of Sudan to redirect their energies and resources towards economic development,” said Musyoka.

He defined the major bones of contention as the twin issues of secularism and self-determination for southern Sudan, which have been dogging successive Sudanese governments since independence from Britain in 1956.

The issues are mentioned in a declaration of principles, a document which is being used as the basis of the talks. Drafted by IGAD in 1994, the declaration, which includes the right to self- determination and the separation of state and religion, was accepted by the Sudan government in July this year.

However, it was not clear if the government of President Omar Hassan al Bashir, which walked out of IGAD talks in 1994 after refusing to discuss a declaration of principles for as long as it contained references to self-determination and secularism, would commit itself to the document.

“The Sudanese Government has said that it is accepting the document as an agenda for discussion and not as resolutions ready for endorsement,” said a Sudan embassy official told IPS here this week. “We are not bound by the declaration of principles.”

A top SPLA official, Deng Alor, said they had known all along that Khartoum was just buying time to kill any peace talks. “With the government insisting on sharia (Islamic) law and a non multi-party system of rule, I don’t see any room for compromise,” he told the Nairobi-based Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN) of the U.N. Department of Humanitarian Affairs, on the eve of the talks.

“We’re going to these talks knowing Khartoum has nothing much to offer,” said Deng.

Sudan is officially an Islamic state, although the majority of the people in the south of the country are either Christians or followers of traditional African religions.

The Sudanese government delegation to the talks was headed by Foreign Minister Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, and the SPLA by its chief- of- Staff, Commander Salva Kiir.

The negotiations, brokered by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), which groups Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Eritrea, D’jibouti, Somalia and the Sudan, attracted some international attention.

On Thursday, the European Union (EU), issued a statement urging the belligerents to do all they could to bring peace to the northeast African country.

“The European Union … urges all parties to the conflict to arrive swiftly at an outcome that will halt the loss of human life in Sudan, allow humanitarian aid to get safely through to the civilian population and reinstate a full and lasting peace in Sudan, which will also be conducive to the stability of the entire region.

“We repeat our readiness to support the peace process and to assist the Sudanese people in rebuilding their country, but … we insist such assistance is linked to a lasting peace agreement which settles all the outstanding issues,” it said.

If the talks fail, it is likely that both sides will return to war.

SPLA Leader Colonel John Garang claims his forces control almost the whole of the south and are tightening their noose around the main southern town of Juba, which they aim to capture from the government forces.

Sudan’s government, for its part, last week announced an intensive campaign to recruit more than four million youths into the national military service before the end of 1997. State minister in the Ministry of Defence, Omar Abdul Marouf, said the aim of the campaign was to boost the national army.

Sudan has allocated about 80 percent of its current budget to defence and security.

Garang said here in September that the war was inflicting untold suffering on the people of the south. “And we understand that the war is costing Khartoum government at least 2.5 million dollars a day,” he told journalists.

More than one million people have died in southern Sudan since the SPLA launched its bush war in May 1983, demanding greater autonomy for the non-Muslim population of the south — home to 35 percent of the 30 million Sudanese — from the Arabised Muslim north.