Sudan Ruling Party Slams SPLM Withdrawal from Unity Government
October 12, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan’s ruling northern party criticized former rebels from the south Friday, a day after they suspended their participation in the central government.
The decision by the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM) to pull its ministers out of the national unity government was a serious blow to the fragile peace agreement that ended two decades of civil war between the north and south that left some 2 million people dead.
With its decision, the SPLM "undermines the peace process and seeks to break up the partnership and alliance with other parties to serve the foreign agenda of undermining the salvation regime (central government)," Nafi Ali Nafi, deputy chairman of the northern National Congress Party (NCP), was quoted by the official SUNA news agency as saying.
The SPLM said Thursday it was withdrawing its 18 Cabinet ministers, including the foreign minister and vice president, and three advisers from the central government. The southern party accuses the NCP of multiple breaches of the 2005 peace deal, including not sharing the country’s oil wealth as agreed, not pulling troops out of southern Sudan, and remilitarizing contested border zones where the main oil reserves are located.
Nafi contested the southerners’ claims Friday, saying it was the SPLM that had not abided by the security provisions of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The deputy chairman said his government had redeployed 87.4 percent of its forces from the south to the north, while the SPLM had redeployed only 6.7 percent of its forces in the opposite direction.
U.S. officials and other international observers have warned that the peace agreement between Sudan’s Muslim-dominated north and predominantly Christian and animist south was in danger of unraveling, threatening a new civil war that could also dash hopes for ending a separate conflict in western Darfur.
Andrew Natsios, the White House’s special envoy to Sudan, said during a visit to Sudan last week that he was concerned about the health of the 2005 peace deal and warned of an elevated risk of renewed clashes.
The Khartoum government led by President Omar al-Bashir has rejected a border drawn by an international commission, and both sides have reportedly massed fighters along the contested region.
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