KHARTOUM (Agencies)
Sudan's former southern rebels will rejoin the national government on Dec. 27, a presidential spokesman said on Tuesday, one day after the United Nations offered to helo the two rivals cement a deal to end the crisis which threatened to tear Africa's largest country apart.
"The SPLM ministers will be sworn in on Dec. 27 and there will also be a meeting of the council of ministers (cabinet) on that day," Mahjoub Fadul, the president's press adviser told Reuters.
The former southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) withdrew from the coalition government formed after a landmark 2005 peace accord in October in protest, saying their northern peace partners were reluctant to implement the deal.
The two partners announced political agreement on all issues last week except the status of the oil-rich central Abyei region which is disputed between the two sides.
The SPLM estimates oil revenues from Abyei since the deal to be at least $1 billion and accuses the northern National Congress Party of taking it all.
Sudan produces at least 500,000 barrels per day of crude. Under the deal the SPLM should get around 50 percent of all oil revenue from wells in the south.
But the north-south border, the area where much of Sudan's oil is found, is also disputed.
Fadul said the border commission met the presidency Monday and told them it would present a suggested north-south boundary on a map after the Muslim Eid holiday which, after agreement by the presidency, would then be implemented on the ground.
The Eid al-Adha holiday in Sudan begins on Tuesday and ends on Saturday. SPLM officials were not immediately available to comment on who their new ministers would be.
Meanwhile, the U.N. Secretary General's Special Representative in Sudan Ashraf Qazi told reporters "We are ready to help by any means possible."
He welcomed the agreement between north and south Sudan on key outstanding issues to pave the way for a return of the SPLM to the unity cabinet.
Sudan's north-south war claimed 2 million lives and drove more than 4 million from their homes. But it has been largely overshadowed by a newer uprising in Sudan's western Darfur region, which Washington labeled genocide.
Khartoum rejects the term, which European governments are reluctant to use. Sudan blames the Western media for exaggerating the conflict. The world's largest humanitarian operation is helping some 4.2 million in Darfur. |
