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From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Wed Oct 13 2010 - 15:39:30 EDT
Tribes can solve Sudan's Abyei row alone: nomads
Wed Oct 13, 2010 5:31pm GMT
* Abyei, south Sudan three months away from key votes
* North/south political rivalry complicating Abyei-nomads
KHARTOUM, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Sudan's Misseriya nomads on Wednesday called
for direct talks with tribal leaders to resolve a dispute over the future of
the country's oil-producing Abyei region, saying politicians had complicated
the issue.
Residents of the central Abyei area are less than three months away from the
scheduled start of a referendum on whether to join north or south Sudan, a
vote promised in a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of north-south civil
war.
North and south Sudan's main political parties, who both claim the area,
remain at loggerheads over how to organise the vote and analysts have warned
growing tensions over the plebiscite could re-ignite conflict.
The latest round of negotiations between the parties, attended by U.S. Sudan
envoy Scott Gration, ended in Addis Ababa on Tuesday without agreement.
Leaders from the Misseriya, who regularly drive their livestock through
Abyei, told journalists on Wednesday they could resolve disputes over the
territory in a matter of days with direct talks with chiefs from Abyei's
Dinka Ngok tribe, without interference from politicians.
"What we need is for the SPLM (the south's dominant Sudan People's
Liberation Movement) and the National Congress Party (the NCP - the ruling
party in the north) to take their hands away," Hussein Jalal-Aldin, deputy
chairman of the Misseriya Forum, a tribal deliberative body, told Reuters.
"They (the political parties) have distorted everything. They have caused so
many unnecessary problems. The people (of Abyei) were living amicably".
Aldin said the Abyei dispute had been complicated by north- south
competition over oil in the area -- a subject that he said was of little
interest to the Misseriya and Dinka who had found traditional ways of
settling their land disputes for decades.
Aldin said he hoped the two groups would be left on their own to resolve the
issue at the next round of talks, due to start in Addis Ababa at the end of
the month.
"With direct talks we could resolve this issue in two days," said senior
Misseriya official Saddig Babo Nimr at a press conference in Khartoum.
The question of who gets to vote in the referendum remains one of the key
sticking points. The Misseriya say they have as much right to vote in the
plebiscite as the Dinka while SPLM leaders have insisted only settled Dinka
and a handful of Misseriya should count as full time Abyei residents.
The Abyei vote is scheduled to take place on Jan. 9, 2011, the same day as
southerners are due to vote on whether to stay part of Sudan or declare
independence.
SPLM leaders have said southerners are likely to vote for independence while
the NCP, headed by Sudan's president Omar Hassan al-Bashir, is campaigning
for them to choose unity.
Bashir promised to step up development in the south in a speech in
parliament on Tuesday, adding: "We hope that our brothers in the south will
opt for unity, if given a just opportunity and left free to choose."
(Reporting by Andrew Heavens)
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