You have commented 338 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Africa Horn
Bashir Ready 'Any Time' to Meet S. Sudan Leader
2012-12-27
[An Nahar] Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir
Head of the National Congress Party. He came to power in 1989 when he, as a brigadier in the Sudanese army, led a group of officers in a bloodless military coup that ousted the government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and eventually appointed himself president-for-life. He has fallen out with his Islamic mentor, Hasan al-Turabi, tried to impose shariah on the Christian and animist south, resulting in its secessesion, and attempted to Arabize Darfur by unleashing the barbaric Janjaweed on it. Sudan's potential prosperity has been pissed away in warfare that has left as many as 400,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced. Omar has been indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court but nothing is expected to come of it.
is willing to meet his South Sudanese counterpart to help put stalled security and economic agreements into effect, official media said on Wednesday.

Bashir "affirms his readiness to meet Salva Kiir in any time and place to speed up implementation of the Addis Ababa cooperation agreement", the SUNA news agency said in a brief report.

SUNA did not indicate if Bashir's comment stemmed from his meeting earlier Wednesday with Æthiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, who arrived to bolster peace efforts between Khartoum and Juba.

"The Æthiopian prime minister's visit comes in the context of the Æthiopian endeavors to push ahead the grinding of the peace processor between Sudan and South Sudan," Khartoum's presidential press secretary Emad Sayed Ahmed told SUNA.

Desalegn will travel to South Sudan on Thursday, the news agency reported.

Khartoum and Juba have failed to implement the pivotal agreement they signed in September and hailed as ending conflict between them.

The deals, reached after African Union
...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful...
-led talks in the Æthiopian capital Addis Ababa, called for a jointly-monitored demilitarized buffer zone and a resumption of South Sudanese oil exports through northern pipelines.

They also allowed for a reopening of border points for general trade, after the two countries fought a war along their undemarcated frontier in March and April.

Khartoum accuses South Sudan of supporting an insurgency in its border states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile, which has been a major obstacle to implementing the agreements.

The South, in turn, says Sudan backs rebels on southern territory.
Posted by:Fred

00:00