gw,
Your news is a very positive step IMO for AKSEF in terms of its Sudan concessions... Also the SPLA now officially and publicly proposed today in Nairobi in the peace talks the partitioning of the Sudan into two separate entities:
Sudan rebels make new demands at peace talks
12:25 p.m. Nov 05, 1997 Eastern
By Matthew Bigg
NAIROBI, Nov 5 (Reuters) - Sudan rebels have put tough new conditions to the government at peace talks on resolving the country's 14-year conflict.
The conditions, in a document by the Sudan People's Liberation Army's (SPLA)political wing, set a two-year limit for a referendum on self-determination for south Sudan.
In that time Sudan would be reorganised into a confederacy of the north and south, according to the three-page document provided by the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM).
'Sudan shall be governed as a confederal union of two states, namely, the Southern State and the Northern State,'' said the document.
Peace talks restarted last week after a three-year gap, brokered by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a seven-nation grouping of states including Sudan and chaired by Kenya.
Talks between the SPLA and the Khartoum government were due to restart on Wednesday after a break since Monday, a senior rebel official said.
The leader of the government delegation Foreign Minister Ali Osman Mohamed Taha requested the break to consider the SPLA document, SPLA officials said.
''They are going to go back to the peace talks today (Wednesday) and we are waiting for a response from the government,'' the official, who sat in on the talks last week, told Reuters.
Last week SPLA chief of staff Commander Salva Kiir said the SPLM wanted self-determination for the south and for the whole country to become a multi-religious, secular state.
It has now imposed what analysts said were new and stiffer conditions.
The SPLM document says south Sudan should have a choice of "...statehood, i.e. becoming a separate and sovereign independent state or...remaining part of a single united Sudan on the basis of the political and military arrangements of the interim period.''
During the two-year interim ''the two component states of the confederation shall be linked by a central authority to be known as the supreme authority of the confederation.
''In terms of institutions, powers, functions and procedures, the supreme authority shall be structured in accordance with provisions of the SPLM legal framework for the peaceful resolution of the Sudanese conflict,'' the document said.
It restated SPLM demands for a separation of religion from the state, repeal of Moslem sharia law and political pluralism.
The SPLA's more specific demands reflected its stronger military and diplomatic position, said Moustafa Hassouna, lecturer in diplomacy and international studies at the University of Nairobi.
''They are shifting the parameters of the conflict,'' he said. ''They are asking for a little bit more. The northerners are buying time. They are not sure what they should do.''
The SPLA threatens the southern capital Juba after an offensive in March, while the umbrella rebel group the National Democratic Alliance, which also demands confederation and is based in Eritrea, has closed on the Roseires Dam, the capital's main power source.
Kenya's Foreign Minister Kalonzo Musyoka and a senior Kenyan military officer are mediating the talks behind closed doors at a government training institute outside Nairobi.
-- Nairobi Newsroom ++ 254 2 330261 |
