Their strategy is as much political as military: by cutting lifelines to Khartoum and defeating government forces in the south they believe they can trigger the ‘protected' (by arms) popular uprising and eventually bring down the government of figurehead President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir and NIF boss Hassan Abdullah el Turabi...
Then Cairo said river transport with Sudan would resume and on 12 December that President Omer el Beshir would visit...
Enough political leaders were present to make the summit look convincing but the absentees as well as Nigeria's General Sani Abacha Congo-Kinshasa's Laurent Kabila and Sudan's Omar el Beshir included Paul Biya of Cameroon (busy forming a government) Ben Mkapa of Tanzania (at his party's congress) and regional kingpins Daniel arap Moi of Kenya Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Nelson Mandela of South Africa...
Sayid Hamed Siraj is often described as making President Omer el Beshir 'look like a genius'...
Vol 38 No 18 |
- SOUTH AFRICA
The news broke as President Nelson Mandela was meeting Presidents Robert Mugabe Yoweri Museveni and Omer el Beshir as part of his efforts to get the NIF and SPLA to talk to each other forcing Mandela as the Mail put it 'to do some fast talking'...
In a 12 August Pretoria press conference with President Omer el Beshir Mandela said: 'A solution is needed...
Engagement means welcoming NIF moves such as April's 'Peace Agreement' with Southern factions (not the SPLA or other NDA parties) and acceptance this month of the Declaration of Principles of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development at talks in Kenya (this would lead to a democratic secular state which the NIF consistently rejects: Lieutenant General Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir later said the Principles were 'not binding')...
He gave the House a letter from President Omer el Beshir inviting 'the FBI's Counter-terrorism units and any other official delegations' to 'work with our External Intelligence Department in order to assess the data in our possession and help us counter the forces your government and ours seek to contain'...
The government response is unconvincing: the titular Head of State Lieutenant General Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir first told the Sudanese that he would countenance negotiations with the opposition 'only through the barrel of a gun'; then in the wake of massive government losses he invited exiled Umma Party chief El Sadig el Sadeeg el Mahdi back to Khartoum to negotiate...
Khartoum was tense as the government called reluctant residents to defend 'the faith and the homeland' as a furious President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir repeatedly put it...