JUBA, Sudan, 22 October 2005 — South Sudan will not wait for its constitution to be approved by Khartoum before forming a government, a vital move toward the reconstruction of the devastated land, southern Sudan’s president said yesterday. Salva Kiir, the president of south Sudan and head of the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, declined to say when he would name the heads of more than 20 ministries the southern administration announced this week.
But he promised it would happen before the constitution, still being discussed in the southern parliament, was approved by the Sudanese government’s Justice Ministry. “We will not wait for that. We will have to put in place a caretaker government until when the constitution is out, then that government will be confirmed. So it will not take a couple of weeks again,” Kiir told Reuters. “The formation of the government of south Sudan will be soon.”
The peace deal, which ended what was then Africa’s longest-running civil war, was expected to open the way for the development of the south.
But the death of former SPLM leader John Garang in a helicopter crash in July, which led to Kiir’s ascension, and other factors have held back progress. While businesses have begun to pour into the region on the promise of a vast new market, infrastructure and basic government services have yet to materialize.
In the southern capital, Juba, there is only one tarmac road, blighted by potholes, a fact Kiir was quick to point out in showing how progress had stalled. “We have not yet started even to do anything in the south. There is no rebuilding in the south because nothing was built, actually. So we are starting from scratch and starting from scratch needs a lot of resources,” Kiir said.
Meanwhile, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer flew to southern Sudan yesterday for talks with regional leaders. She was scheduled to meet here with senior figures of the SPLM, including Kiir. Frazer was also scheduled to meet Riek Machar, the vice president of southern Sudan and senior SPLM officials, before returning to Khartoum for meetings with the country’s leaders.
In another development, the African Union’s Peace and Security Council on Thursday extended by three months the mandate of its protection force in Sudan’s war-ravaged region of Darfur amid escalating violence. In a statement released in Addis Ababa, the PSC adopted the decision to renew the mandate of its African Union Mission in Sudan until Jan. 20, 2006.
The “council reiterates its full support to AMIS and the determination of the AU member states to continue to take all possible steps to ensure the success of the mission and the full implementation of its mandate,” it said.
The extension comes as the Sudan’s government and two Darfur rebel groups suspended their AU-sponsored peace talks in the Nigeria capital Abuja for a month after making little progress in seeking a solution to the 30-month-old conflict.
