|
Sudanese Rebels Vow to Fight Until Peace in Southern Sudan
That headline doesn't make any sense, does it?The Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA) rebels have vowed to fight the Khartoum government until there is peace in the southern Sudan, the Sunday Vision newspaper reported. SPLA commander Edward Abyel Lino, a director in the office of SPLA leader John Garang, was quoted by Uganda's leading English newspaper as saying that the SPLA forces had stepped up their operations against government forces to protect areas under their control. "We are definitely stepping up our operations. If the Khartoum government goes ahead with war we are going to fight them to the end," he said. Why'd you bother with peace talks and reaching an agreement then? Oh, yeah. The gummint troops were thumping you regularly then. I remeber now. The SPLA made an advance and captured the southern Sudanese strategic town of Kapoeta from the government troops on last Sunday. "Our advance on these areas has nothing to do with neighbors, " he said, adding that "we have to defend ourselves so that the liberation continues." Or at least until the gummint troops get the upper hand and kill large numbers of you. Then you can have another ceasefire and break it. The SPLA commander's speech was carried one day before peace talks on the Sudan conflict are scheduled to open in Nairobi on Monday. Meanwhile, Sudanese First Vice-President Ali Osman Taha has urged the United States to put pressure on the SLPA at the peace talks due to open in Nairobi. Since the Sudanese government has shown good faith in all this and the SPLA hasn't, it would seem to make more sense to work with the government on ints internal structure, pointing out as often as we can that economic development and individual liberty are so tightly intertwined as to be nearly inseperable. And we could look the other way as they kill the faithless rebels. Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2002-06-17 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=5161 |