CAIRO, 2 June 2005 — A team drawing up an interim constitution for Sudan has agreed that a traditional Islamic phrase will appear in the text for the Muslim north but not for the non-Muslim south to bridge a sensitive religious divide. Southern Sudanese leader John Garang told reporters in Cairo, other than the Islamic preamble, the texts for the two regions would be the same. “We are working in order not to divide the Sudan. We want unity in diversity,” he said when asked whether the compromise was a sign the country was heading towards division.
Garang’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) fought a 21-year war with the government of the mainly Muslim north that was partly sparked by the imposition of Islamic Shariah law over the country, including the largely Christian and animist south. The two sides signed a peace deal in January that includes dividing wealth and power, and giving southerners the right to hold a referendum on secession after a six-year interim period.
It also involves splitting state and religion so Shariah law would not apply in the south. A 60-member constitutional commission has been working on an interim constitution. The SPLM wants no religious references in the constitution, which has caused some tensions with the Islamist government.
Garang, speaking after talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, also repeated an appeal for aid for the south, where he said limited resources after a poor harvest were being strained by hundreds of thousands of southerners returning home.
Sudan, meanwhile, has called for general mobilization of its army reserves in the eastern region bordering Eritrea to secure roads and an oil pipeline after rebels kidnapped three politicians, a local official said. Eastern rebels joined with an insurgent group from the western Darfur region to kidnap three local politicians last month on a major road in Sudan’s poor east.
“We called our troops for mobilization. This is to call all the reserves, in Red Sea state and in Kassala state,” governor Hatim Al-Wasiyla told Reuters from the eastern city of Port Sudan yesterday.
