JEDDAH, 5 December 2003 — Sudanese Vice President Ali Othman Muhammad Taha yesterday signed a breakthrough peace accord with a leader of the troubled country’s northern opposition. Muhammad Othman Al-Mirghani is the leader of the National Democratic Alliance, an umbrella organization of opposition political parties that also groups the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army led by John Garang.
Sudanese Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Othman Al-Dirdiri, quoted by Agence France Presse, said the peace accord was signed here yesterday and that Taha left the Kingdom following a short visit.
Mirghani has been living in exile since the government of President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir took power in a military coup in 1989. He heads the Democratic Unionist Party, one of the major political parties banned by the regime. Sadiq Al-Mahdi, the leader of another main party, the Ummah Party, earlier signed a similar accord with Khartoum enabling Mahdi and his followers to return from years of exile in Eritrea and Egypt. The Sudanese media have been talking of a breakthrough in the efforts to achieve national reconciliation and peace in the country following two decades of a bloody civil war that pitted the mainly Arab north against the Christian south.
