Government sets out priorities for peace process

The government of Sudan has said that a new draft framework agreement is a precondition to the resumption of peace talks in Kenya on 10 August, the latest date put forward by the mediators. "If we're going to have a fresh draft we would be willing to sit down again to negotiate, but if we are asked to renegotiate the same draft from Nakuru, I think we would find it very difficult to sit with the SPLM and discuss it," Mohamed Ahmed Dirdeiry, Sudan's deputy ambassador to Kenya and resident delegate to the peace talks, told IRIN in a wide-ranging interview. Ongoing peace talks between the government and rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) reached their lowest point on 12 July when the government accused mediators from the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) of siding with the rebels in the draft, which was presented to both sides in the Kenyan town of Nakuru. Dirdeiry said it would be "unwise" to ask the government to renegotiate the same document because "it led us nowhere". "In fact it really deepened the crisis and cleavage between the parties," he added. He said it was "logical" to be presented with a new draft, since one party had rejected the previous one. "This was the tradition of these negotiations, that you get draft after draft until you really narrow the gulf between the two parties," he said. In the context of a new draft, he added, the government had a number of specific requirements. One of the main demands was that national elections should be held within 18 months, instead of after the six-year interim period as favoured by the SPLM. He said this would decide the power-sharing arrangements for most of the six-year interim period, and do away with fixed quotas and percentages. Early elections would also sort out the issue of a national army, he said, which the government wanted to be united and "reshaped" before any elections. "If we're going to have elections after 18 months, naturally you will not need an army other than the national army to continue beyond that term, because if the SPLA is going to lose in the elections - a possibility that no-one can rule out - and if they still have an army, they can act against the outcome of the election." Having one central bank and one national army, as part of a "model of unity" for the six-year interim period, were essential, he added, as well as Sharia law in the capital. He said the draft had "undermined" the unity provided for in last year's Machakos framework agreement. "If IGAD is saying that we have to suspend the unity of Sudan, then let IGAD go to hell," he said. The draft presented in Nakuru provides for the current president to continue to lead Sudan, with the SPLA leader as vice-president until elections are held. The latter will also head a government of southern Sudan. But Dirdeiry objected to the idea of having just one vice-president from the south, stressing that north Sudan was twice as big as the south. As Sudan was a "diversified nation", comprising many groups, there should be two vice-presidents with the second coming from another northern group, he said. "Just talking about one vice president, who would be a southerner, would definitely disadvantage every northerner," he said. He also claimed that the SPLM had been given too much power in the draft agreement, to the exclusion of other southern groups. The government wanted 60 percent of southern representatives at cabinet level to come from the SPLM and 40 percent from other southern groups.