KHARTOUM, 2 May 2005 — Government ministers and former rebels danced and embraced in Khartoum on Saturday to celebrate the start of work on a new constitution which will pave the way for a government of national unity in Sudan.
But the proceedings were somewhat overshadowed by the refusal of one of Sudan’s largest opposition parties to participate in the commission which will form Sudan’s new constitution over the next six weeks.
“This interim constitution will form the basis of the most important and historic stage of this nation,” President Omar Hassan Bashir told ministers, opposition politicians and former southern rebel leaders, many of whom had returned to the capital for the first time in more than two decades. Sudan’s government and the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement ended more than 20 years of civil war in the south with a peace deal in January.
Islamist Hassan Al-Turabi’s Popular Congress Party agreed to participate, and the broad based Democratic Unionist Party said it would likely join in about 10 days after further talks. But the popular Umma Party, led by the last democratically elected leader of Sudan, Sadiq Al-Mahdi, has refused to join the commission, saying it wants more seats to be given to opposition political forces.
Senior former rebel official Nhial Deng read out a speech on behalf of SPLM leader John Garang, who will return to Khartoum to take up the post of first vice president once a new government is formed.
