Minister admits to loss of Raga

Minister of External relations Mustafa Usman Isma’il on Wednesday admitted that the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) had captured the towns of Raga and Deim Zubier in Western Bahr al-Ghazal, southern Sudan, the ‘Khartoum Monitor’ newspaper reported on Thursday. SPLA spokesman Yasr Arman said the rebel movement had captured all of western bah al-Ghazal, opening up a lucrative trade corridor to the neighbouring Central African Republic and also offering access to Darfur regions in western Sudan, where people have their own grievances with the government in Khartoum, the BBC reported.

Isma’il called for intensive mobilisation of government-allied forces to recapture the areas, stating that the government would adhere to “the agenda of war” being practised by SPLA leader John Garang, the report said. The minister also said he had provisionally taken over the duties of the Peace Advisory to President Umar Hasan al-Bashir; this follows Bashir’s recent sacking of his three-member team of peace advisers: Mutrif Sidiq and Joseph Lasu, and the ministerial-level presidential adviser for peace affairs, Makki Ali Balayil.

Isma’il said in a press conference this week that the SPLM/A had used regional peace talks under the Inter-Governmental Authority on development (IGAD) as a mechanism to make the international community consider it was working towards peace while not showing any flexibility on the issues.
He said the coming months would see a wider campaign to explain the government position on the question of southern Sudan and expose SPLM/A procrastination in successive rounds of peace talks in order to “isolate” the rebel movement within the international community, the official SUNA news agency reported on Thursday.