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Sudan rebels to rejoin govt
18/12/2007 21:44 - (SA)
Khartoum - Sudan's former southern rebels will rejoin the national government on December 27, according to comments by the country's presidential spokesperson published in several newspapers on Tuesday.
Mahjoub Fadul said the southern ministers would be sworn in on December 27 and that the Cabinet would also meet on that day.
The development followed lengthy meetings last week between President Omar al-Bashir and the leader of the autonomous southern region, Salva Kiir, who had agreed to resolve some of the issues that threw the country's national unity government into its largest crisis to date.
The return of southern minister to the government could end the rift that erupted in October when the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM) ministers led by Kiir walked out of the government in protest at what they consider Khartoum's foot-dragging in implementing key points of the 2005 peace deal that ended Sudan's civil war.
200 000 dead, 2.5m homeless in 2007
Although Kiir did not immediately confirm the comeback, there were indications last week the ministers would return by the end of the month.
More than 2m people died during the 21-year civil war in Sudan that ended in 2005 with a peace deal known as the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, or CPA. But the peace deal remains fragile and the southern part of Sudan remains largely lawless.
The SPLM accused the government of not sharing the country's oil wealth as agreed, not pulling troops out of southern Sudan, and remilitarising contested border zones where the main oil reserves were located.
But the two sides said last week they agreed on a timetable for the redeployment of their forces and the deployment of joint units in the sensitive oil field areas.
Among issues that remained unresolved is who would control the oil-rich Abyei region, contested by northern and southern Sudan.
There have been fears that fierce rivalries over it could re-ignite north-south violence and also spill over to the western Darfur region, ravaged by its own four-year conflict in which more than 200 000 people have been killed and 2.5m displaced.
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