Sudan Rebels Declare Cease-Fire, Call for Civilian Rule

John Garang, leader of the rebels in southern Sudan, declared a unilateral seven-day cease-fire Tuesday and called on the soldiers who overthrew President Jaafar Numeiri to yield power to a civilian government. He said he will resume the rebellion if they refuse.

Meanwhile, Sudan’s new military leader, Gen. Abdul-Rahman Suwar Dahab, appointed a 15-man transitional military council with himself at the head to govern the country for an unspecified period. He previously promised democratic elections in about six months.

Garang, a former colonel in the Sudanese army who was educated in the United States, said the country has merely traded one distasteful military government for another and pointed out that the new leaders were all Numeiri loyalists until a week ago.

“The ugly shadow of Numeiri continues to loom ominously over Sudan,” said Garang, whose militia force numbers 6,000 to 7,000 men. His statements were carried on the radio station of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, which transmits from neighboring Ethiopia.

“I call on Gen. Dahab to immediately transfer power to the people. The generals must resign and hand over power to the people within seven days from today (Tuesday). During this period the SPLA will suspend operations except for moving military targets by road, river or air,” Garang said.

The Sudan People’s Liberation Army is composed mostly of southern black Christians and animists, while the north is populated by Arab Muslims.

Regime Preoccupied

Western diplomats said that the Khartoum officials’ initial reaction to the comments was that Garang was probably putting more pressure on the new government than it could realistically hope to respond to. The three-day-old regime is preoccupied with trying to stabilize the situation in the Sudanese capital and put together a caretaker government.

However, Garang clearly was expressing a widely held sentiment among the Sudanese, who are distrustful of military rulers and suspicious of the regime’s promise to hand over power to civilians “soon.” Numeiri, a general, also said when he came to power--as does virtually every military leader in Africa--that he was only an interim president. That was 16 years ago.

Ironically, it was Numeiri’s willingness to compromise with southern rebel secessionists that gave him his greatest national achievement: an end, in 1972, to a bloody, 17-year war between the north and south.

Garang, a Christian, is a nationalist, not a secessionist. The rebellion resumed with guerrilla attacks almost two years ago, reflecting southern grievances that the northerners were not sharing political power or the nation’s wealth. Numeiri’s imposition of strict Islamic law in late 1983 was the final blow, convincing the southerners that they had become second-class citizens.

The new regime moved quickly to defuse the religion issue. It dismissed Chief Justice Fuad Amin Abdul-Rahman, who is known as a fundamentalist and strict interperter of Islamic law. It also accepted a petition from the judges’ union, one of the participants in the strikes that contributed to Numeiri’s downfall, to seek review of what reports from Khartoum called “hastily passed laws.” The union asked the new regime to draft a constitution “based on national values and basic freedoms.”

Dahab, Sudan’s new ruler, took a conciliatory tone toward the southerners after overthrowing Numeiri on Saturday. He said he wanted national reconciliation--without offering any specific plan on how to achieve it--and proposed a cease-fire.

There are some indications that the new regime is still facing difficulties in Khartoum. The international airport remained closed, and a government switchboard operator reached in the capital late Tuesday said telephone and telex lines were about to be cut again for 24 hours.

Arab diplomats said the regime appeared to be having problems dissolving the 45,000-man state security agency that was the backbone of Numeiri’s strength. Its members have been told to turn in their arms, but intelligence sources said there has been at least one clash between the agency and the army.

Meanwhile, as Numeiri remained in Cairo exile, the new rulers continued their arrests of his senior aides. Among those being detained are Numeiri’s brother, Mustafa, and sister-in-law, Fatma Khalil, and the former vice president, Rashid Taher.