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Warring Sudanese Parties Invited To Tripoli Peace Meeting
CAIRO, Aug 14 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Sudanese opponents in a long-running civil war have been invited to Tripoli to discuss an Egyptian-Libyan peace initiative, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said on Tuesday.
"A meeting will be held next week in Tripoli to continue discussion of the initiative, with the Sudanese parties invited to study and decide on the next steps with us," the MENA state news agency quoted Maher.
The minister did not mention if all parties, including the main opposition group - the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) - were being invited or at which level, and gave no further details of the meeting, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Maher said consultations on the peace initiative were continuing "despite some people's reservations and despite attempts to bypass it," MENA reported.
The Egyptian foreign minister was speaking after Sunday's meeting with Libya's minister for African affairs, Abdel-Salam Triki, to discuss the joint peace initiative.
Last week, Maher denied that the leaders of Sudan, Egypt, Libya and other African countries had agreed to hold a summit in the Libyan capital later this month, after an announcement to that effect by Sudan's foreign minister.
Earlier on Saturday, Sudan's Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail told reporters that a summit grouping the leaders of Sudan, Libya, Egypt, Kenya and possibly several other African nations, would be held in Tripoli at the end of August to discuss ways of ending 18 years of civil war in Sudan.
Ismail said the summit would look at ways to implement a joint Egyptian-Libyan peace initiative, aimed at bringing the Khartoum government together with opposition factions to discuss ways of ending the war and forming a transitional government.
The Egyptian-Libyan peace plan, which has been accepted by both the government and the opposition, includes calls for a plural democracy and a national peace conference to revise the constitution of 1998.
On August 2nd, Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir said that he would require opposition parties to enter a "political agreement" before they join a transitional government aimed at helping end the civil war.
Beshir said, "a political agreement precedes formation of the transitional government," with his ruling National Congress, a provision not included in an Egyptian-Libyan initiative aimed at ending the fighting.
"We are not going to object to participation in the government by any political party that agrees with us and we are prepared to admit such a party to the council of ministers or any other position," Beshir told a gathering of student members of his party.
"We will never hand it [power] over to those residing abroad," referring to opposition parties based in Cairo and Asmara.
However, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), an umbrella movement for southern and northern opposition groups, has demanded that any peace process should also focus on self-determination for the south and the separation of religion and government, demands rejected by Khartoum.
"I strongly feel that any initiative aimed at resolving the Sudanese issue cannot succeed fully if the problem of the south is not addressed," Vice-Chairman of the South Sudan Coordination Council (SSCC) Theophilus Ochang was quoted as saying by the independent Khartoum Monitor newspaper.
The evangelical Christian right and the Roman Catholic Church want U.S. President George W. Bush's administration to arm the Christian opposition in southern Sudan so they can continue their fight for separation from the northern government, which has been fighting to extend Islamic law throughout the country.
Under the presidency of Bill Clinton, sanctions were imposed on Sudan for alleged involvement in so-called "terrorist activities".
The opposition in mainly animist and Christian southern Sudan have been fighting against successive Arab/Muslim northern governments since 1983.
Up to two million people have been killed in the nearly two decades of the Sudanese conflict - mainly through war-related famine, while another four million have been displaced.
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