| Submit your comments on this article |
| Africa Horn |
| U.S. does not support al-Hilu call for self-determination |
| 2020-04-29 |
| [Sudan Tribune] U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan Donald Booth said he tried to convince the SPLM-N al-Hilu to engage in peace talks with the Sudanese government and stressed that he told them that his country would support their demand for self-determination. Booth made this statement in a web event on Sudan and U.S. relations organized by the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Colombia University on Friday 24 April. Speaking about the ongoing peace talks in Juba, Ambassador Booth said progress has been achieved in the discussions between the government and the gangs except for the SPLM-N al-Hilu and the Sudan Liberation Movement led by Abdel Wahid al-Nur. He said the SPLM-N al-Hilu has insisted that the transitional government should declare that Sudan would be a secular state while the government that the secularism and the role of Sharia (Islamic law) should be settled by the constitutional conference. "They (the government) have pointed out that they had made changes to many laws: they have bravely increased religious freedom, restricted the application of Sharia law but that sort of retail approach has not satisfied the SPLM-N al-Hilu faction," he said. In return, in the SPLM-N al-Hilu they have pushed the idea of self-determination "which in effect means independence," he added. "I have tried to convince them that is something even the United States or others will support," he stressed. Al-Hilu conducted a split in the SPLM-N because Malik Agar the then leader of the unified group and the Movement’s secretary-general Yasir Arman who was also the chief negotiator refused his request to demand the inclusion of the self-determination in the talks with the former Islamist regime of Omer al-Bashir. |
| Posted by:Fred |