Confusion over Nigerian peace efforts

A meeting of southern Sudanese political forces to address peace issues in Sudan, scheduled to take place in Nigeria from 15 to 17 November, has been postponed indefinitely, Republic of Sudan Radio reported on Thursday, citing Nigerian embassy sources in Khartoum. The official Sudan News Agency (SUNA) on Thursday gave no reason for the postponement of the talks, designed to bridge differences of approach between the southern Sudanese parties. The adviser to the Sudanese president on peace affairs, Ghazi Salah al-Din al-Atabani, on Thursday delivered to Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo a letter from Sudanese President Umar Hasan al-Bashir about peace in Sudan, SUNA reported, but gave no details. Meanwhile, Nigeria has called on the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) to back an initiative put forward by President Obasanjo to end 18 years of war in Sudan, the organisation said in a statement on Friday. Obasanjo's special envoy Usman Bugaje presented a formal request for OAU backing for an inter-Sudanese peace conference to the OAU secretariat in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Thursday, AFP quoted the statement as saying. The talks, which Nigeria wanted to host "in the near future", would bring the authorities in Khartoum around the negotiating table with armed and unarmed Sudanese opposition forces, the statement said. Through its deputy secretary general in charge of economic affairs, the OAU expressed "solidarity" with the Nigerian initiative, it added. The proposed 15-17 Abuja conference was intended to bring together a southern political forces conference under the chairmanship of Babangida, according to political sources. The plan was to have participants, including the SPLM/A, all armed factions, southerners in government, civilian political parties, women, and regional and national figures, reach agreement on common negotiating policies and positions, they said. The proposed conference of southern forces was not seen by the Nigerian government as a separate initiative, but as an effort to bring "added-value" to the peace talks taking place under the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and/or the Libyan-Egyptian initiative, the sources added. The Sudanese government has said it has lost faith in the IGAD process, but would give it one last chance when the two sides meet for the next round of talks in November. A recent note by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Situation of Human Rights in Sudan said the IGAD-led peace negotiations had so far failed to produce the expected results, owing to the stumbling block issues of the relation between religion and state, and self-determination. "Regional players have not yet succeeded in reconciling the parties on these two long-standing issues," a UN press release quoted it as saying. The United States, European Union, IGAD and others should redouble their engagement in the search for a peaceful solution to what threatened to become a "forgotten war" in the eyes of the international community, it added. On Thursday, meanwhile, a senior figure in the opposition Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) who was chairman of Sudan's Sovereignty Council in 1986, Ahmad Ali al-Mirghani, returned to Sudan after 12 years of self-exile in Egypt. He said he had returned to help accelerate the pace of national reconciliation, providing the government was committed to its pledge of "political openness" towards political parties. "I am returning to Sudan under the present margin of democracy for maintaining and developing it, and to work for halting the bloodshed, enhancing national unity and speeding up the comprehensive political settlement," Mirghani said. The backbone of the DUP is the Khatmiyyah, a moderate Sufi Muslim religious sect with a strong presence nationwide, of which Mirghani is the senior leader, AFP reported on Friday. A number of senior DUP officials who were also in self-imposed exile in Egypt, returned with Mirghani, it said. Mirghani was chairman of the Supreme Council - the body representing the country's political parties - when the current Sudanese President, Umar Hasan al-Bashir, seized power in 1989, overthrowing the elected government led by the then prime minister, Al-Sadiq al-Siddiq al-Mahdi. Ahmad al-Mirghani's brother, Muhammad Uthman al-Mirghani, is chairman of both the DUP and the opposition umbrella National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Thousands of people, including senior officials of the ruling National Congress party and opposition leaders, were on hand to receive Ahmad al-Mirghani on his return to Khartoum in what was touted as another step toward reconciliation in war-torn Sudan, news agencies reported. In a separate development, Riek Machar, leader of the Sudan People's Democratic Front (SPDF), on Wednesday denounced the joint Libyan-Egyptian peace initiative on Sudan, because it did not uphold the right to self-determination of the south, AFP reported. "The people of southern Sudan have already stated that if peace is to be attained, let them exercise the right to self-determination," it quoted him as saying at a press conference in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on Wednesday. Machar said the Libyan-Egyptian initiative smacked of an attempt to sabotage the IGAD bid for peace, but that it should be allowed to continue. He said that while a merger proposed in May between the SPDF and the SPLM/A had not been wholly delivered, the two groups had a "unity of purpose" and that a consensus existed on the right to self-determination. The SPLM/A has previously insisted that it would only take part in the Libyan-Egyptian initiative if it took on board four issues that the rebel movement considers essential: the right to self-determination; separation of state and religion; creation of an interim constitution; and creation of an interim government based on that interim constitution. Egypt and Libya are reported to be opposed to self-determination, fearing it could result in separation of the south, but the Sudanese government and all significant northern and southern opposition groups, as well as pro-government southerners, have formally accepted it in various documents and forums. There is no accepted agreement on what self-determination means, however.