Divided Sudan Now Inevitable, an Opposition Leader Claims

Sudan’s interim peace accord will lead to the secession of southern Sudan, opposition leader Hassan Turabi said in remarks published Friday.

“The agreement dealt a blow to Sudan, the Arab world and Islam, and it will lead inevitably to the division of Sudan,” Turabi told Egypt’s weekly magazine Al Ahram al Arabi.

Turabi, a hard-line Islamist under house arrest, was speaking about the framework accord signed July 20 in Machakos, Kenya, by the state and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army.

The agreement provided for a referendum on self-determination for southern Sudanese. It will also exempt southerners from the Muslim-based legislation that applies in northern Sudan. The two points had been major obstacles to brokering an end to Sudan’s 19-year civil war.

During the years Turabi was in government, from a 1989 coup until 1999, he was seen as unbending in negotiations with the southern rebels, who have been fighting since 1983 for greater autonomy for the largely animist and Christian south.