Minister tells of IGAD negotiation committees

Dhio Mathok, State Minister at the Peace Advisory to Sudanese President Umar Hasan al-Bashir, has said the government and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) - meeting through the Technical Committee of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) - have agreed to form five permanent committees for peace negotiations, the ‘Khartoum Monitor’ reported on Tuesday. These committees will continue negotiations until November this year, during which time they will have conducted at least three meetings, according to Mathok. The committees would organise seminars, workshops and joint deliberations between IGAD countries so that a conducive formula for negotiations could be found, the ‘Khartoum Monitor’ reported.

The two sides agreed on little at the last IGAD summit in early June except to set up a permanent committee in Nairobi to pursue dialogue. Progress was slow at the IGAD talks on Sudan, because there was a lack of agreement on the core issues: determination of the areas that constitute southern Sudan, and their the boundaries; state and religion; the system of government in an interim period; and the sharing of wealth, Kenyan Foreign Minister Bonaya Godana told journalists after that meeting. Kenya holds the chair of the IGAD peace process on Sudan. Among the serious and long-standing differences between the two sides were the SPLM/A’s demand for a secular state, and its insistence that any ceasefire be part of an overall settlement rather than preceding such a settlement, according to diplomatic sources.

The principles of a parallel Egyptian-Libyan peace initiative were provisionally accepted by all sides to the conflict in Sudan, but the SPLM/A subsequently stated it would not negotiate under the initiative unless it incorporated a number of controversial amendments suggested by senior members of the opposition umbrella National Democratic Alliance, including acceptance of the principle of self-determination for the south, and separation of religion and state. The SPLM/A called on “all mediators” to consider the IGAD principles as the basis for peace talks.