23 - 29 August 2001
Issue No.548
|
Al-Ahram Weekly Online 23 - 29 August 2001 Issue No.548 |
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
One step forward...
Efforts continue to bring the Sudanese government and opposition to a national reconciliation conference. But the prospects are growing dimmer. Soha Abdelaty reports
Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail met Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher in Cairo on Monday to seek ways to reinvigorate the Egyptian-Libyan peace plan, an initiative that has been stalled for some time.
During the past few weeks, doubts have been cast on Egypt and Libya's efforts to end the civil war in Sudan, even though both the Sudanese government and the opposition National Democratic Alliance (NDA) accepted their joint proposal. In June, the initiative was fine-tuned into a nine-point peace plan that the two sides also accepted. The plan calls for a national reconciliation conference to discuss constitutional reform and the establishment of an interim government to run the country until free and fair elections can be held. But so far, the conference has existed only on paper.
One hurdle has been recent statements by John Garang, leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), which many interpret as a retreat from his original acceptance of the plan. But Sudanese Foreign Minister Ismail appears unconcerned, reassuring reporters after his meeting with Maher that the NDA (to which the SPLA is party), continues to support the initiative. "The position that was announced by the NDA through its leadership is still a position that is credible with the two countries of the initiative," he said.
Differences have also emerged in the last two weeks between the two mediating parties as they attempted to broaden the scope of their initiative. Egypt did not welcome a Libyan proposal to organise an Arab-African summit. Maher argued that the time was not ripe, and the matter required further consultations. Analysts explained his reluctance by arguing that Egypt did not wish to involve more mediators. Libya, for its part, believes that the Sudanese problem can only be resolved with the assistance of other African parties.
But Egypt is not the only party to oppose an Arab-African summit. Both Garang and NDA chairman Mohamed Osman Al- Mirghani are not expected to be present at celebrations marking the anniversary of Muammar Gaddafi's rise to power scheduled for 1 September. Were the summit to take place, it would have been held on the sidelines of those celebrations.
Nevertheless, Ismail remains optimistic. "The summit is not proposed at the moment, because a summit cannot be organised without Egypt... This does not mean that the idea of the summit has been dropped... It is proposed for the future, but the date and place have yet to be determined," he said on Monday.
But the only concrete step so far is that an Egyptian-Libyan committee will meet next week to set a date for the proposed national reconciliation conference. But even there, complications have arisen.
Speaking at a meeting with the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) in Sudan on Friday, Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir reiterated his government's refusal to separate state from religion. The opposition, particularly the SPLA, insist that without this separation, a peace deal cannot be reached.
And to complicate matters further, the government and the opposition are once again involved in confrontations. On Monday, the SPLA took a number of oil workers and government soldiers "prisoners of war", on the grounds that oil revenue pays for the government's war effort.
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
Recommend this page