War costing half of annual budget

Sudan’s civil war is absorbing half the country’s budget, President Omar al-Bashir said. He was quoted by the ‘Al-Rai Al-Am’ newspaper yesterday as saying: “The government is not able to provide the minimum limits for survival for the Sudanese because of the spending on the war.” He added that: “We reject and foreign solution because they want to serve their own interests and not Sudan’s.” According to The Associated Press, this was an apparent reference to Egyptian and Libyan mediation attempts. Meanwhile, Sudanese Minister of Information Ghazi Salah al-Din has called for the formation of a coalition government to work within the framework of the new “Tawali” constitution.