OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cairo | Tuesday 10.30pm.
SUDANESE opposition leaders on Tuesday rejected Sudan’s new constitution, based on Islamic law, saying they plan to continue to fight for democracy.
The Sudanese opposition is largely based in the Christian, animist south of the huge country, a region which has long resisted what it perceives to be enforced “Arabisation” by the Islamic north.
The opposition statements were in a communique issued after a three-day Cairo meeting by members of the National Democratic Alliance, an umbrella group for Sudanese opposition parties.
They were invited to meet in Cairo by Egypt after peace talks with the Khartoum government earlier this month in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa failed.
Present at the Cairo meeting was John Garang, leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, which has been fighting since 1983 for more freedom for the south, as was alliance head Mohammed Osman al-Mirgani and former Prime Minister Sadiq el-Mahdi.
El-Mahdi lost his position in a 1989 military coup led by Lieutenat General Omar el-Bashir, initiator of the Islamic regime in Khartoum.
The opposition leaders accused el-Bashir’s regime of using “food as a weapon” in fighting the southern rebels, amongst thousands of starving people.
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