Afro-Arab peace summit scheduled for September

The Sudanese Government announced on 3 August that an Afro-Arab peace summit would be held in September in an attempt to end the country’s 18-year civil war, news agencies reported. AFP quoted Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Uthman Isma’il as saying representatives from Sudan, Libya, Egypt, Kenya and several other African countries would meet in Tripoli to look at ways to implement the recently agreed joint Egyptian-Libyan peace proposal. Opposition parties from both northern and southern Sudan had declared their support for the summit, AFP added.

The Sudanese government-owned news agency, Suna, quoted the presidential political adviser, Qutbi al-Mahdi, as saying: “The Afro-Arab summit is a good step to engage all the nations concerned with the Sudan peace process towards reaching a regionally accepted solution.” The Egyptian-Libyan peace initiative - accepted by the Sudanese government and a number of opposition and rebel groups in July - provides for an interim government in which all political forces will be represented. Although the National Democratic Alliance - an umbrella movement for southern and northern rebel opposition groups - has broadly welcomed the initiative, it wants to add the principles of self-determination for the south and the separation of religion and state, as a parallel initiative under the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development does.