KHARTOUM, 18 October 2007 — Sudan’s President Omar Bashir has reshuffled his Cabinet in a bid to win back southern former rebels who pulled out of the unity government last week, an official said yesterday. The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, however, said it would not rejoin the government until a raft of other demands is met.
The SPLM recalled its ministers from the Cabinet on Thursday over what it called Khartoum’s failure to implement a 2005 peace deal between north and south Sudan that ended a decades-long civil war. The group had also cited Bashir’s refusal to reshuffle the southern ministers in the cabinet as pivotal in its decision to pull out.
The SPLM had been strongly pushing for the removal of Foreign Minister Lam Akol, viewed by the south as too close to Bashir’s National Congress. He was also seen as defending government actions in the troubled western Sudanese region of Darfur.
In a gesture aimed at wooing the southern partners back, Bashir appointed Deng Alor, a senior SPLM leader, as foreign minister. Alor, who previously held the post of minister of Cabinet affairs, was also governor of Bahr Al-Ghazal province in south Sudan, where the SPLM was founded and which was deeply affected by the north-south war. Akol will take Alor’s previous post.
The move, however, was not enough to convince the SPLM to rejoin the unity government. “The southern ministers are ready to take their new positions as soon as the differences with (Bashir’s National Congress Party) are resolved,” Bagan Amon, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement secretary general told AFP.
The group’s demands focus on getting Khartoum’s troops out of the south and resolving the fate of the disputed oil district of Abiye. The new ministers “will stay out of government until the application of the terms of the peace accord which have not yet been implemented,” Amon said.
He said that the new posts announced by Bashir corresponded roughly to a list the SPLM handed the president though “some names were not chosen.” Mansur Khaled, a northerner and member of the SPLM who was adviser to late SPLM chief John Garang, will become minister of foreign trade. Khaled has held ministerial office on four occasions, including the post of foreign minister in a previous government.
James Kol Rol was appointed minister of humanitarian affairs while Kosta Manibi becomes investment minister. Health Minister Tapita Boutros and Transport Minister Kwal Miang, both southerners, retain their portfolios.
Six southern ministers of state have been added to the government and two presidential advisors named, according to decrees signed by Bashir.
The reshuffle, which took place late on Tuesday, came hours after a meeting between Bashir and a delegation of southern officials led by SPLM No. 2 Riek Mashar. Mashar said he and two more of the group’s officials had met Bashir to discuss a letter to him from Salva Kiir.
Kiir is also expected to hold talks with Bashir in the next two days, Mashar said. “The meeting was cordial, and the two leaders will meet soon to discuss the outstanding issues and resolve the crises between the parties triggered by the nonimplementation of the CPA and violation of the spirit and equal partnership between the two parties,” he said.
Mashar was referring to the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which ended 21 years of war between the Muslim north and mainly Christian and animist south that killed at least two million people and displaced millions more.
On Tuesday, Kiir assured a pro-SPLM gathering in Juba that his group would not go back to war but would pursue the push for full implementation of the peace deal. The SPLM’s decision to withdraw its 19 ministers and deputy ministers from government presented the first major threat to the peace deal.
