Al-Mahdi blames Garang for talks breakdown

Ummah Party (UP) leader and former Prime Minister Al-Sadiq al-Mahdi on Monday blamed the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) for the failure of a meeting hosted in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, on 3 May, during which the Nigerian hosts sought to bring the Sudanese opposition groups closer to a common platform, the Associated Press (AP) reported. The meeting between Al-Mahdi and SPLM/A leader John Garang ended without an agreement which could have led to cooperation between the northern and southern opposition movements. “Garang has used a clear tactic to add other issues to our discussion and bring our meeting in Abuja to a failure,” Al-Mahdi told AP after returning to Khartoum. Al-Mahdi, who quit the opposition umbrella National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in March 2000, has urged the SPLM/A to declare a ceasefire so that Sudan’s various opposition groups could unite and enter talks with President Umar al-Bashir on ending Sudan’s 18-year civil war. Al-Mahdi said Garang had proposed another meeting in June to establish a joint committee between the UP and the SPLM/A, but that he rejected it because he saw it as a means for Garang “stalling” on a peaceful solution. In a statement after the Abuja meeting, the SPLM/A said that while Garang welcomed any call for peace talks with the government, he did not see a need for an opposition group to mediate. The movement also said on Monday that it could not commit itself to an Egyptian-Libyan peace initiative for Sudan, because the peace process being facilitated by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) took precedence. In a meeting with Libyan leader Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi in Uganda on Sunday, Garang asked that Libya try to merge its peace efforts with those of IGAD, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported. It was unfeasible to negotiate under the IGAD initiative and other initiatives at the same time on the same issues, the agency quoted an SPLM/A statement as saying. Negotiations were needed between the warring sides, not a reconciliation conference, as proposed by the Egyptian-Libyan initiative, the SPLM statement added. In 1999, Egypt and Libya began trying to reconcile Khartoum with all rival Sudanese factions and political parties, whereas IGAD has focused exclusively on the government and the SPLM/A.