Al-Ahram Weekly | Region

		31 Oct. - 6 Nov. 2002 Issue No. 610 Region	Current issue Previous issue Site map
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Recommend this page

Food first
Finally, humanitarian concerns seem to be more seriously addressed by the Sudanese protagonists at the peace talks in Kenya. Gamal Nkrumah reports

In an unprecedented development, the Sudanese government and the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), the country's largest armed opposition group, reached an agreement with the United Nations that permits unfettered access by humanitarian relief agencies to help hundreds of thousands of sick and hungry southern Sudanese people.
The agreement, scheduled to take effect on 1 November will run until 31 December. Both sides have expressed guarded optimism. The agreement takes place at a time when Washington is stepping up its pressure on the Sudanese government to bring war in the country, Africa's largest, to a conclusive end.
"The United States and the international community at large is no longer prepared to accept Sudanese government duplicity," Yasser Arman, official SPLA spokesman, told Al-Ahram Weekly.
For 13 years, Khartoum barred humanitarian relief, medicine and food aid from reaching hundreds of thousands of people in SPLA-held areas of the Nuba Mountains in western Sudan. It only rescinded with the 19 January signing of a cease-fire with the SPLA. The situation in the south is even more critical. The Sudanese government had also stopped food and humanitarian supplies from reaching some 60 troubled areas in southern Sudan on the pretext that the planes flying in were transporting arms and ammunition for the SPLA. Indeed, the Sudanese authorities have stopped humanitarian relief supplies no less than 14 times in just under four years.
In the past, Khartoum has proved to be most intransigent whenever the question of humanitarian relief supplies is raised. "Coming under intense US pressure, and with the promulgation of the Sudan Peace Act, the Sudanese authorities will find it increasingly difficult to adopt a cynical and bellicose attitude," Arman explained. The Sudan Peace Act makes it difficult for government forces to mercilessly bombard civilian targets in and around oil producing areas. Khartoum's scorched earth policy of genocide near oil installations would now be virtually impossible to pursue," he added.
Khartoum and the SPLA resumed peace talks in Machakos, Kenya, on 16 October, a day after signing a peace initiative brokered by the Inter-Governmental Authority for Development (IGAD), a regional organisation which groups together seven East African countries, including Sudan.
The Machakos talks are also taking place under the auspices of the US and other western nations. The Sudanese government, however, has expressed grave reservations about the exclusion of Sudan's Arab neighbours, especially Egypt, Libya and Saudi Arabia.
The Egyptian-Libyan peace initiative in Sudan stressed the territorial integrity and national sovereignty of Sudan and eschews the possible division of the country. The key features of the 20 July Machakos protocol give the southern Sudanese people the right to self-determination at the end of a six-year period, following a referendum and the separation of religion from state, at least in the southern third of the country.
The war-induced famine in the southern third of the country has left a trail of human misery, utter devastation and mass starvation. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that unhindered humanitarian aid will make it possible for an additional 600,000 people to receive food aid, in addition to the present figure of three million.
Ominously, a senior Sudanese government official warned that the agreement, "does not mean that unregistered and unlawful organisations will be permitted to operate unrestricted". Sudanese presidential adviser, Ghazi Salaheddin Attabani, however, indicated that a polio immunisation campaign run in conjunction with the UN's Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) will start as scheduled on Tuesday.
The SPLA believes that it is of critical importance to involve the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the umbrella opposition organisation grouping the SPLA, and other mainly northern Sudanese opposition parties, in the peace talks. The Sudanese government, has adamantly opposed bringing in other Sudanese opposition parties to the talks. "We have to work on securing a national consensus," Arman told the Weekly. "The SPLA calls for the widening of the circle of participant groups at Machakos. The contribution of our partners in the NDA is invaluable. Indeed, it is imperative to the success of Machakos. All the political forces in the country must be involved in the peace talks," he added.
Arman also spoke of the need to involve Arab states in Sudan's peace talks. The Arab contribution to the success of the peace talks is as important as the African contribution. He also stressed that the international community now sees developments on the domestic front as inseparable from the arena of foreign affairs in the aftermath of 11 September. The Sudanese government, he said, thought that it could conclude a deal whereby it could trade sensitive information on international terrorism in return for being giving a free hand to wage a brutal war in southern Sudan. Khartoum was in for a rude shock. The international community stressed that upholding human rights and an end to domestic terrorism, or the terrorisation of the innocent civilian population, must end before any radical change of policy towards Sudan is considered.
Other leading Sudanese political opposition figures concur. "The most pressing concern is that Sudan embark on the path of democratisation, coupled with the strengthening of human rights," Farouk Abu Eissa, the head of the Cairo-based Arab Lawyers Union and official spokesman for the NDA told the Weekly.
Khartoum, however, has a radically different perspective. "The Sudan peace act is in fact a Sudan war act," Prof Ahmed Abdel-Halim, the Sudanese ambassador to Egypt, reiterating President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir's earlier statement, told the Weekly.
The collapse in September of peace talks in Machakos, Kenya, between the Sudanese government and the SPLA was prompted by the Sudanese government's protest against the capture of the southern Sudanese garrison town of Torit. Moreover, the Sudanese government wants to restrict the talks to bilateral negotiations between the SPLA and the regime in Khartoum about problems in southern Sudan. It insists that the upsurge of fighting in eastern Sudan must be treated separately, as a provocation and armed aggression by neighbouring Eritrea, an IGAD member state. The two countries are virtually in a state of war as the Sudanese opposition NDA is headquartered in the Eritrean capital Asmara.
Under the Sudan Peace Act, signed by US President George W Bush, Washington is entitled to block oil revenues -- Sudan's biggest foreign exchange earner -- if it feels that the Sudanese government is not fulfilling its obligations under Machakos. That, Ambassador Abdel-Halim said, is an unacceptable gross interference in the domestic affairs of a sovereign nation.

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