Southern Sudan’s Minister of Defence and a presidential adviser were among at least 23 people killed on Friday in a plane crash blamed on engine failure, officials said. ”Two engines failed and there was nothing the pilot could do,” First Vice-President Salva Kiir told a news conference.
Sudan on Tuesday shut down for its first census in 15 years, a milestone in the peace deal that ended Africa’s longest civil war but clouded in dispute threatening to undermine the accord further. The two-week census is crucial to prepare constituencies for national elections.
Formerly warring north and south Sudan were at loggerheads on Sunday as the south pulled out of a national census, a cornerstone of their fragile peace agreement, citing a barrage of grievances. ”We have deferred the census until sometime this year,” the information minister in the southern government confirmed.
Uganda’s fugitive rebel chief Joseph Kony will sign a final peace deal with the government on the South Sudan-Democratic Republic of Congo border two days before an official ceremony, South Sudanese officials said on Friday. South Sudan’s Vice President Riek Machar has been chairing long-running negotiations between the two sides in Juba.
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/ 17 January 2008
Fuel and basic commodity shortages in landlocked countries neighbouring Kenya, which is wracked by political unrest, have eased but traders are hoarding supplies and prices have risen steeply. Kenya is the gateway to several other eastern African nations such as Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and Southern Sudan.