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Sudan ready to talk church-state separation with Christian, animist insurgents

Special to World Tribune.com
MIDDLE EAST NEWSLINE
Friday, February 18, 2000

CAIRO [MENL] -- Sudan has signalled its readiness to consider changing the character of the Islamic state.

A senior official said the regime in Khartoum is ready to discuss demands by non-Islamic insurgency groups in the south to end the imposition of Islamic law throughout the country. The insurgency in the south has been fueled by protests that Khartoum oppresses the country's Christian and animist minority.

Vice President Ali Othman Mohammed Taha said on Wednesday that his government is prepared to discuss with southern rebels demands to separate church and state. The demands have been supported by the United States and African allies of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army, which has been waging a 16-year civil war in south.

Arab diplomats said the offer by Sudan is unprecedented. They said until now the regime headed by President Omar Bashir had refused to make any changes in the Islamic regime. But the diplomats said the ousting of Bashir's rival, former parliamentary speaker Hassan Turabi, has allowed for changes. Turabi was regarded as the founder of the Islamic regime when it captured power in a 1989 coup.

Taha's statement was immediately questioned by Islamic fundamentalist leaders in Sudan. They pointed to a pledge by Bashir that he would not make any changes in the Islamic state.

But some opposition elements praised the remarks. "It is a boost to the camp that believes that there is room to all citizens in a Sudan that is free of a single party's hegemony and fanaticism," Taj Mohammed Saleh, a member of the Democratic Unionist Party, told the Al Ayyam daily in Khartoum. "Every person has his own party and belief but we should get together as Sudanese to agree on the country's supreme interests, through dialogue, rather than coercion."

In Doha, Bashir, on a tour of the Gulf, reiterated that he would not change the Islamic nature of Sudan. But he added that the Islamic movement made many mistakes and that Islam does not force its views on nonbelievers.

In Washington, the Clinton administration has imposed economic sanctions against Sudan's state-owned oil company Sudapet Ltd. and to the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Co. Ltd. In 1997, President Bill Clinton authorized a trade embargo against Sudan.

Friday, February 18, 2000


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