It is time for international dignitaries who support the peace process in Darfur to speak up, writes Gamal Nkrumah The ignominy of it all. Endless meetings and policy debates. The ongoing deliberations about the new Sudanese constitution is a case in point. The constitutional talks faltered this week because the Sudanese government side insisted to insert the phrase " Bismillah Al- Rahman Al-Rahim " (In the Name of God the Merciful the Compassionate), at the beginning of the text of the constitution. But with very little groundbreaking successes. It is against this gloomy background that United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan embarked on a tour of several African countries, including Sudan, to drum up support for the Sudanese peace process and especially as far as it concerns Darfur. "We need money," Annan told reporters in New York before he left for Africa. "We are about $350 million short," he explained. Cash-strapped Sudan is facing three critical inter-locking problems: economic malaise, political instability and social and ethnic unrest. Within the country, there is a widespread belief that the ruling Popular Congress Party (PCP) must divest itself of its authoritarian tendencies or relinquish power. Naturally, it would take time to devise a new mechanism for effectively running the country, Africa's largest. Many feel that such a large and ethnically diverse country as Sudan must be run as a federal state. The opposition say that this entails taking all of the disparate groups' views into account without favouring any single party or giving any one particular political or ethnic group preponderance. Sudan has a myriad problems. In a matter of such complexity, however, it may not be possible to achieve both the right answer and a quick outcome to the Sudanese political impasse. It is vital, as Annan pointed out, that those who have faith in Sudan now stand up for what they believe in. Today, Annan chairs a pledging conference on Darfur in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. From Addis Ababa, Annan is scheduled to fly to Sudan today to meet first with Sudanese government officials in Khartoum and then on to Rumbek the new administrative capital of southern Sudan where John Garang leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) is based. Annan is also scheduled to tour Darfur, to inspect the humanitarian situation there. Annan wants to increase the number of African peacekeeping troops in Darfur from the current 2,000 to 8,000. Yesterday, NATO Secretary- General Jaap de Hoop-Scheffer and European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana met with Annan in Addis Ababa to review the situation in Darfur. "What is important," De Hoop Scheffer said, "is that the government of Sudan will give the green light to the AU." Sudan officially extended a cautious welcome to NATO support for the AU's peacekeeping and monitoring mission in Darfur. The Sudanese authorities insist, however, that they can only accept NATO and EU logistical and financial support. Khartoum refuses to have non-African troops monitoring the situation in Darfur. African Union Commission Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare also attended the Addis Ababa fund-raising meeting. Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir is a military man and no orator. But, he has a powerful grip on power. And, it is also worth remembering that the opposition is fractious and disunited. Still, Washington believes in the leading role of the Sudanese government and the SPLA. Everybody else gets squeezed out. The US systematically refuses to deal with the opposition, much to their chagrin. Washington is, therefore, resented by northern and southern groups including the Umma Party and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and other members of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The NDA, the umbrella grouping of leading northern opposition parties including the DUP and the southern-based SPLA, is sceptical about the government's intentions. In the meantime, southern Sudanese factions opposed to ethnic Dinka hegemony and the SPLA, seen largely as a Dinka-dominated group, deeply resent Washington's great faith in the SPLA's ability to run southern Sudan efficiently from Rumbek in the heart of Dinka country. The peace deal between with the SPLA signed on 9 January 2005 promised a better future for Sudan and might be repeated with the armed opposition groups in Darfur and other parts of the war-torn country. The political tactics of the Sudanese opposition are often so out of touch with those of their populations that they are scarcely a political threat to the regime. In a separate development, Sudanese authorities clamped down hard on displaced people in the refugee camp of Soba Aradi, 30kms south of the Sudanese capital. The run-down camp houses thousands of southern Sudanese refugees who had fled the fighting in southern Sudan in the 1990s.
