The leader of the former Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), Salva Kiir will Monday hold talks with Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. The talks are aimed at resolving the brewing political impasse, which is threatening to undermine implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed in 2005 to the civil war between the north and south. The SPLM says it expects both Kiir and Bashir to discuss and agree on the way forward in meeting the deadline of January next year by which to fully implement the CPA.
Pagan Amun is the general secretary of the SPLM. From the capital, Khartoum he tells reporter Peter Clottey Sudan’s future would be brighter if the president agrees to implement the CPA.
“It is true that they are meeting today. First of all they met last Thursday, they had a good meeting, and they have agreed that Monday they would be meeting. I expect from the meeting today that they would discuss all the issues at the center of the national crisis we are going through. And we believe that with this meeting the two leaders would be able to overcome the difficulties of the disagreements that are existing as a result of the obstruction of the process of the implementation of the Sudan peace comprehensive agreement,” Amun noted.
He said the SPLM would send its members to rejoin the government of national unity once the crisis is resolved after the meeting between Kiir and Bashir.
“We also expect them to instruct the six-member committee or six-man committee to resume their work after resolving the disagreement on the methodology and the way to tackle the seven issues that have been raised by the SPLM as a minimum package,” he said.
Amun said Monday’s discussion would focus on means by which the deadline for the CPA’s implementation would be met.
“I believe that they would be discussing these issues, and they would ask the six-man committee to detail a program that would see the implementation within the time that they have agreed, that is up to 9th of January 2008. Of course there are a lot of areas of sticky issues like the Abie protocol, which the national congress have obstructed to implement because they have reneged from their commitment to accept the report of the experts in the Abie boundary commission,” Amun pointed out.
The SPLM withdrew its ministers from the national unity government in October, complaining that Khartoum had failed to implement key parts of the 2005 peace deal, including the redeployment of northern soldiers from the south.