Sudan s SPLM moves north
ICC NOTE: The SPLM is moving to Khartoum so they might better influence policy in the captial. Pray that as the CPA is in a precarious position that the South would continue to be strengthened.
Feb 16, 2007 Sudan Tribune (KHARTOUM) Sudans southern former rebels said on Friday they would move their headquarters to Khartoum to influence national policy more as north-south relations had soured since a 2005 peace deal ended Africas longest civil war.
A SPLM supporter, exhausted, sits at the roadside after being turned down from entering the Republican Palace in Khartoum for John Garangs sworn in, on Saturday, July 9, 2005, as Sudan s first vice president. By Jacob Deng Mayom (Gurtong).Under the peace accords a national coalition government was formed, wealth and power was shared and the south given the right to vote on secession by 2011.
But the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM) has complained their northern partners in peace, the dominant National Congress Party (NCP), have not implemented the accord and have taken key policy decisions unilaterally.
“We are going to relocate the headquarters of the SPLM to Khartoum so as to be more active in national politics,” said SPLM spokesman Yasir Arman.
The SPLM headquarters was previously in the south Sudan capital Juba and observers had often criticised the SPLM for focusing on southern issues and neglecting national politics.
Arman said the NCP was wrong to prevent a U.N. human rights delegation from visiting the war-torn west Sudan region of Darfur this week and it was just the latest in a string of decisions imposed by the NCP without consulting the SPLM.
“This will add more fuel to the problems between the government of Sudan and the international community and we dont want to do that,” said Arman.
COALITION IN DANGER
Khartoum has defied a U.N. Security Council resolution authorising some 22,500 U.N. police and troops to keep peace in Darfur, calling it an attempt to colonise Sudan . The SPLM supports a clearly mandated U.N. Darfur mission.
Relations have been tense between the world body and the NCP, which expelled Jan Pronk, the top U.N. official in Sudan , last year. This week Khartoum also refused visas to a six-member delegation from the Geneva-based U.N. human rights council, saying one member was biased.
