Sudan, S. Sudan Urged To Talk With Rebels To Realise Peace
Sudan and South Sudan have been urged to open dialogue with the rebels present in their territory if peace is to be realised, the National Legislative Assembly Minority leader Onyoti Adigo Nyikwec has said. 21 March 2013 The National Legislative Assembly Minority leader Onyoti Adigo Nyikwec said there is need for peaceful co-existence by dealing with the insecurity in the two countries so that development can go ahead.[Gurtong | File] By Misuk Moses Mule JUBA, 21 March 2013 [Gurtong]- “I and our party, we believe in dialogue. Without dialogue and you think you will solve the problem militarily, I doubt,” he said. “Somebody who thinks that there is a solution militarily is a lie. The best way is to dialogue with the rebels,” he added. He argued that whether the people dying on the side of Yau Yau or the SPLA, they are all South Sudanese and that who so ever wants people to die is an enemy of peace. “If we want to make sure that there is peace then the governments should make sure that they sign peace with the rebels,” he advised. “Sudan should sign peace with the rebels in the North then we shall have peace. South Sudan should sign peace with the rebels in South Sudan if we need peace because you will not have development if you don’t have peace,” he added. Onyoti stressed the need to make peaceful co-existence by dealing with the insecurity in the two countries so that development can go ahead. According to him, there are people within the two countries who do not want peace to prevail. He says that South Sudan has the longest border with Sudan and that insecurity in the borders will be disadvantageous to both countries. “We have been saying that there are national issues like security, service delivery, unity of the people and economic prosperity of the country should have been thought of national dialogue of all stake holders of the Republic of South Sudan to think about the solutions to these problems,” he said. Recently South Sudan launched a military offensive against Yau Yau, a rebel leader in Jonglei State, an approach which Onyoti is opposed to. Reuters reported yesterday that Sudan made its first offer to hold direct talks with rebels on its border with South Sudan. Sudan Defence Minister Abdel Raheem Mohammed Hussein said Khartoum would be willing to have discussions with the SPLM-North rebel group in its Blue Nile and South Kordofan states, providing the dialogue was based on protocols set out in a 2005 peace agreement with South Sudan. Sudan has previously refused to meet the rebels and accused South Sudan of backing the SPLM-N, a former ally of the SPLM, whose decades-long war with Khartoum resulted in the 2005 peace deal and the secession of South Sudan in 2011. The SPLM-N rebellion in Blue Nile and South Kordofan to overthrow the rule of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir began shortly after secession. South Sudan denies backing the SPLM-N. There was no immediate comment from the SPLM-N, but leaders have previously said they would be willing to talk to Sudanese officials in Addis Ababa, where the African Union has been brokering talks between Sudan and South Sudan. Fighting in the two Border States has forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes, and complicated ties between Sudan and South Sudan. This month, the two countries agreed on a timeframe to withdraw troops from their disputed, roughly 2,000-km (1,200-mile) border, something they agreed to do in September but have failed to implement because of lingering tensions. The withdrawal was seen as a vital first step to resuming southern oil exports through Sudan, which both countries depend on for revenue and foreign currency. South Sudan shut off its roughly 350,000 barrel-a-day output in January last year in a dispute with Sudan over how much it should pay to send it through Sudanese pipelines to a Red Sea port. Sudan's north-south civil war was one of Africa's longest and deadliest, killing some 2 million people. The war over oil, religion, ideology and identity devastated much of South Sudan and sucked in many of its neighbours. Posted in: Home, Foreign Relations, Governance -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "South Sudan Info - The Kob" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
