Tomasso, Three or four hundred troops per day is not bad, by sea and air. Most of the equipment they need is already there ostensibly shipped into the Sudan as "oilfield equipment"....
Note on U.S. position....Also watch what SPLA does with the three major bridges they captured. that will tell you if the SPLA feels that they can live side-by-side with the northerners after peace is achieved....
says it opposes US self-determination proposal
CAIRO, Sept 1 (AFP) - The northern Sudanese opposition Umma
party said here Friday it opposes US proposals for southern
self-determination because they would divide Sudan.
"We are against such ideas because we want to first give a
chance to a solution guaranteeing Sudan's unity," said the Umma
party spokesman in Cairo, Hassan Ahmed al-Hassan.
"We favor a peace accord giving the southerners the right to
self-determination after a four-year transitional period in which
the northerners and southerners try to rebuild trust between
themselves," he said.
The US envoy to Sudan, Harry Johnston, proposed that the
Sudanese government immediately give the southerners the right to
self-determination, Hassan said.
The United States is also offering to meet leaders of the
various northern and southern Sudanese opposition groups to discuss
these ideas at the same time as the conference of the opposition
umbrella group, the National Democratic Alliance, opens next
Wednesday in Asmara, he said.
The Umma party, the main northern opposition group, pulled out
of the NDA in March, charging that southern rebel leader John Garang
and others were against a political settlement in Sudan.
"Garang could try to use this meeting to obtain support for
these new US ideas," Hassan said.
A spokesman for Garang's Sudan People's Liberation Army said
their leader had arrived in Asmara Thursday for the second NDA
conference. The first was held in Asmara in June 1995.
The NDA must revise its strategies and tactics and discuss
initiatives for establishing peace and democracy in Sudan at the
conference, SPLA spokesman Yasser Erman said.
Successive Arab-Islamic governments in Khartoum have been
fighting a 17-year civil war against animist and Christian rebels in
the south. Northern opposition groups joined the rebels in 1995.
SPLA-government peace talks have been taking place since 1993
under the sponsorship of the east African Intergovernmental
Authority on Development, but no progress has been made.
Egypt and Libya launched an initiative in 1999 to hold a
Sudanese conference including representatives of the government,
northern opposition groups and the SPLA to halt the civil war.
Umma leader Sadeq al-Mahdi sent messages to Egyptian Foreign
Minister Amr Mussa and Libyan African Unity Minister Ali Triki this
week "to ask them to reactivate the Egyptian-Libyan initiative so as
not to leave the field open for the Americans," Hassan said. |
