Friday, September 08, 2006

Rifts between NCP and SPLM? Will the UN Enter Darfur?

Note these last three paragraphs of a nicely written analysis at AllAfrica - Sudan: Will the UN Enter Darfur? by Tony Okerafor (Daily Champion, Lagos, 8 Sep 2006):
In principle, the A.U. have resolved that the U.N. Must replace their forces in Darfur, and its a fact not last on Khertoum. This writer's take on the situation is that the Sudanese won't want to be isolated.

There is every indication that powerful AU member nations, such as, South African, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt and Algeria, are increasingly losing patience with Mr Bashir and his government, and may soon drop their current policy of not opposing Khartoum in public. Added to that, this writer is from the opinion that members of the Khartoum government who came from the S.P.L.M., or the Sudan's People's Liberation Movement, with whom Mr Bashir signed a comprehensive Peace deal on Southern Sudan back in January, 2005, may themselves be prodding President Bashir from within, to listen to the voice of the international community.

For now, the S.P.L.M. representatives in the Khartoum government occupy, among others, one of the vice-presidential positions and the foreign affairs portfolio. In public, they have been speaking against the U.N. taking over from the battered A.U. force, however, we have been reading and hearing of recent leaks from the capital, Khartoum, indicating some sorts of a rift between the National Congress Party, N.C.P., which is Mr Bashir's ruling party, and the S.P.L.M. on how best to proceed on the question of ending the mayhem and the bloodshed in Darfur, which, like southern Sudan, is populated by black Africans.

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