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CAIRO (AFP) - The northern Sudanese opposition Umma party said here Friday it opposes U.S. proposals for southern self-determination because it 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 spokesperson 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 U.S. 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 (NDA), 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 U.S. ideas," Hassan said. A spokesperson 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 opposition in the south. Northern opposition groups joined the southern opposition in 1995. PLA-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. |
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