CNS STORY: Sudan's churches urge efforts to save country from destabilization

SUDAN-PEACE Aug-18-2009 (470 words) xxxi

Sudan's churches urge efforts to save country from destabilization

By Catholic News Service

KHARTOUM, Sudan (CNS) -- Sudan's Christian churches asked the country's political leaders and the international community to step up efforts toward peace and "save the country and the whole region from being destabilized."

A mid-August appeal issued at the end of a four-day meeting of the general assembly of the Sudan Council of Churches urged the major signatories of Sudan's 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement to work urgently to resolve their differences. Sudan's Catholic Church is a member of the council.

The 2005 agreement ended more than two decades of civil war, which left 2 million dead and displaced 4 million. Under the terms of the agreement, in 2011 the semiautonomous government of Southern Sudan will conduct a referendum on self-determination.

Church leaders said four years after the agreement was signed, "Instead of a comprehensive dialogue and reconciliation process as the basis for a common future, we have witnessed people (retreating) back to their own groups. Instead of seeing development and becoming self-sustained, we have to call for providing relief in many areas once again to rescue ... our people."

The church leaders noted that elections have been postponed twice and said that "those responsible to provide security seem to be unable or even unwilling" to do so, "for reasons we fail to understand."

"While disarmament is going on in some places, brand new arms are provided in others, by sources apparently connected to those who seem to have no interest in a common peaceful and just future of our people," they said.

"In a country rich (in) resources like Sudan, many are unemployed or do not get their salaries for months," they said. "This cannot be explained by the global financial crisis alone. Money allocated for development of the people never reaches them but vanishes, unaccounted for.

"Furthermore, especially in the areas where oil exploitation is going on, we witness an ecological disaster, with polluted water and soil. Our people, displaced by the war, cannot return home due to the lack of security, basic services and the environmental damages," they said.

Citing emerging conflicts all over the country, the churches said, "We cannot but suspect a common pattern behind all these armed conflicts, which by far exceed the so-called ethnic clashes, leaving hundreds of people killed and thousands newly displaced."

The churches called on regional and international partners -- especially the United States, Britain, Norway and Italy -- to exert the necessary pressure on the Sudan People's Liberation Movement and the National Congress Party to move on with required discussions in a serious and urgent manner.

They urged Sudan's unity government to improve the security situation in the South and urged the government of Southern Sudan to hold accountable people involved in corruption.

Both governments should provide the needed relief and rehabilitation required by the people, the churches said.

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