Sudan Rebels End Truce, Vow to Renew War
Sudanese rebels said Friday they are renewing their two-year-old civil war and ending a brief truce that followed the ouster of President Jaafar Numeiri in a military coup.
A rebel broadcast called the country’s new military rulers “another form of the regime of dictator Numeiri” and denied reports here that John Garang, leader of the rebellion in southern Sudan, was flying to Khartoum on Friday for peace talks.
A military spokesman had said that Garang would meet with Sudan’s military ruler, Gen. Abdul-Rahman Suwar Dahab. But the same spokesman said Friday, “I know nothing about the trip.”
Dahab, who ousted Numeiri on April 6, has offered to meet with Garang, the U.S.-educated leader of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army.
Grievances Addressed
He has also addressed several grievances of the people of southern Sudan, the rebels’ base. The south, a Christian and animist region, has long been dissatisfied with rule by the more prosperous Muslim north.
Dahab rescinded Numeiri’s division of the previously autonomous south into three provinces in 1983, and pledged to revise the Sharia (Islamic law) introduced by Numeiri the same year.
The rebel broadcast said the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army is struggling for broader goals and will fight on until “the monopoly of power in our country is taken away from the greedy minority. . . . “
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