President Salva Kiir Mayardit has reaffirmed that his party the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement has cut off its adherents in South Kordofan and Blue Nile, adding that ‘SPLM-North’ should change its name.
Speaking at the presidential palace in Juba on Friday, the SPLM leader restated an earlier order to separate the movement from its northern wing. This position comes in the context of the rapprochement between Juba and Khartoum, which culminated in the state visit of the Sudanese leader just three days ago.
“Whatever we agreed here will be implemented and we will go all the long way… The last (point) was the disengagement between SPLM-N and South Sudan. The disengagement has happened. After the referendum, when the results of the referendum were announced, I gave orders. One to the SPLM Secretary-General Pagan Amum that from now onwards, there is no SPLM north section or southern section,” the leader said in mixed English and Arabic remarks while standing side-by-side with his counterpart Omar Hassan al-Bashir.
“The SPLM main body is now in the south. Those who are in the north, who are being called ‘northern section’ they have to abandon the name SPLM and SPLA for their armed wing. They have to leave them and they get new names for themselves. They are Sudanese – we are now South Sudanese,” he continued.
“And whatever they have in assets that you have for them, you (should) give them (their) rights. And they will be in their country. Or they will become (legal) opposition in Sudan. They have to go to another country – not in South Sudan. That was my order to Pagan Amum, which he did, he implemented it.
“The second order was to the army chief, that all the citizens of Sudan who are with us in South Sudan in our army are all to leave South Sudan. Send them to their regions, those who come from South Kordofan, let them go to Abdelaziz. Those who come from Blue Nile, they go to Malik. All their salaries have to be given to them up to the 30th of June 2011,” he said.
Kiir went on to explain that he had reassured the Sudanese president in a phone call last month that he had completely cut off the SPLA-North. He recounted visits by Sudanese envoys who claimed to have evidence to the contrary, which Kiir denied.
He concluded: “This is what I can say about all these things and I want to assure the Sudanese people that we cannot talk with them as brothers and sisters and then we come and launch a war against them. We cannot do that. Thank you.”
Last Wednesday in the Sudanese parliament the Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Mohammed Hussein disclosed that there will be a meeting mid-April in the Ethiopian capital with the southern government to develop a clear disengagement mechanism between SPLA and the SPLA 9th and 10th Division (SPLA-North), which are located in Nuba Mountains and southern Blue Nile, respectively.
Hussein pointed to the agreement of cessation of hostilities signed between the two countries last year. He said that the next meeting will determine the timing for how the disengagement will be done, mentioning also a complaint raised by the Sudanese government to the international observers regarding the non-withdrawal of SPLA forces from around Lake Abyad between Unity State and South Kordofan State.