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Sudanese Opposition Puts Conditions to Arab Peace Plan
CAIRO, June 29 (News Agencies) - Sudan's southern rebels and main northern opposition groups have unanimously backed an Egyptian-Libyan peace plan, but some of them insisted Friday that it include two further points.
The National Democratic Alliance, which includes the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) and northern opposition groups, "unanimously" approved the plan's principles at a meeting here Thursday, said Pagan Amum, an NDA leader.
However, the NDA also wants the initiative to include the principles of self-determination for Sudanese as well as the separation of state and religion, Amum told the French news wire AFP.
The NDA has set up a committee to draft a response that will include those points and be submitted here Sunday to Egypt and Libya, said Amum, who is NDA secretary general as well as a leader of the SPLA.
The NDA also wants the "formal unification" of the Arab plan and one sponsored since 1993 by the Nairobi-based east African Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), Amum said.
The SPLA, which hails from the mainly animist and Christian south, has waged an 18-year war against successive Arab and Muslim governments in the north. The current government in Khartoum, which took power in 1989, is pushing for Islamic law throughout the country.
On Thursday, the NDA "unanimously approved a new version of the Sudan peace initiative" offered by Egypt and Libya, spokesman Hatem al-Sir Ali said, adding that it would make some additional remarks about the initiative.
Diplomats from Egypt and Libya submitted the plan in a memorandum to the Sudanese government, the NDA and the separate northern opposition Umma party on Tuesday.
The memorandum includes "setting up a national transition government, with the participation of all Sudanese parties," Ali said.
Ali said the plan is a "new version" of the one first proposed by Libya and Egypt two years ago, but contains principles for resolving differences that were not included in the original plan.
According to independent Sudanese newspapers, those principles include unity, recognition of ethnic, religious and cultural diversity, introduction of a pluralistic democracy, guaranteeing basic freedoms and human rights and establishment of a decentralized system of rule.
The memorandum also calls for a national conference to revise the constitution and organize general elections, and requires all parties to declare an immediate cessation of fighting.
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