KHARTOUM, 23 September 2005 — President Omar Al-Bashir urged Sudan’s first post-war government yesterday to make safeguarding the country’s unity its top priority after two decades of north-south war.
“The primary duty of all those in government ought to be ensuring that national unity is an attractive option,” Bashir said after the cabinet was sworn in, eight months after a peace deal that ended Africa’s longest-running conflict.
But the new cabinet, which includes one-time foes from Bashir’s northern regime and southern rebel groups, was swiftly dismissed by the opposition as falling well short of a truly broad-based government.
“It is a continuation of the... government that has been in power since the 1989 coup d’etat with limited improvements,” said Ali Mahmoud Hassanain, deputy chairman of the opposition Democratic Unionist Party.
Its establishment is regarded as a major step in the implementation of a January peace agreement that ended 21 years of civil war between north and south in Africa’s largest country.
Twenty-six ministers took the oath at the ceremony yesterday. Two had already been sworn in on Wednesday while two ministries destined for the northern opposition National Democratic Alliance have yet to be filled.
