Ruling party council endorses peace proposal

The leadership council of the ruling National Congress party on 21 July gave its approval of the nine points of an Egyptian-Libyan peace initiative memorandum on Sudan, and gave the go-ahead for the government to take part in a proposed peace conference to be based on them, AFP on 22 July quoted Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Uthman Isma’il as saying. The foreign minister also said the government had formed a number of committees to discuss proposals related to the initiative, AFP reported. Isma’il reiterated Khartoum’s unreserved acceptance of the Egyptian-Libyan memorandum, and said it would be “very flexible” in the talks, “as the priority will be for halting the war and reaching a political settlement that leads to national unity”. He said the Sudanese government would have no reservations about the venue of the proposed conference, whether it was the Egyptian capital, Cairo, or the Libyan capital, Tripoli. President Umar Hasan al-Bashir, speaking in Wad Madani, south of Khartoum, at the weekend, said the current “good omens for peace” did not mean there would be any revocation of the (National) Salvation (Revolution) government, or retraction of its constants or its Islamic course. Bashir said his government would welcome peace “without separating religion from the state and partitioning the country in exchange for peace”, the official SUNA news agency reported. It also quoted Isma’il as saying that “the government has accepted the joint [Egyptian-Libyan] initiative because it did not touch on the constants, particularly Islamic Shar’iah [law]”. Meanwhile, speaking in the University of Juba, Western Equatoria, Libyan leader Muammar al-Qadhafi has asked the government to relinquish the slogans of ‘jihad’ (Islamic holy war) and Islamic orientation because they hardened the feelings of others and delayed solutions to the Sudanese crisis, according to a report in the ‘Khartoum Monitor’. Qadhafi also asked southern leaders inside and outside the country to lay down their arms and sit down for dialogue. The opposition umbrella National Democratic Alliance - which includes the southern-based Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army - has broadly welcomed the Egyptian-Libyan initiative, but wants it to include the principles of self-determination by the people of southern Sudan, and a separation of religion and state, as the parallel initiative under the Inter-Governmental Authority for Development does.