Sudanese Catholic Information Office ------------------------------------------------ S C I O P.O.Box 21102 - Nairobi - Kenya Tel. 00254 - 2 - 562247 fax. 00254 - 2 - 566668 ------------------------------------------------ SCIO, January 15, 1998 ------------------------------------------------ SUDAN MONTHLY REPORT - SCIO, January 15, 1998 1.Chronology 2.Khartoum: Catholic Club Confiscated Chronology December 16: The Canadian oil company, Arakis Energy Corporation, is pressing on with its multi-million dollar oil extraction projects in Southern Sudan, in spite of protests from the people in the area, the UK-based Sudan Democratic Gazette, has reported. Sudanese exiles in Britain, who publish the paper, describe the deal as "illegal". 16: Ugandan rebels, fighting in the West Nile region of Uganda, killed eight people in an ambush on a motor-vehicle along the Koboko-Moyo road, military officers said today. The rebels of the Uganda Rescue Front injured six other passengers during the attack. The rebels are part of a larger group that has recently come under pressure from the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA). 16: Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir said his country's relations with Egypt are on the mend after almost a decade of strained ties, in an interview published in Doha, Qatar, today. "Relations are improving with Egypt and we are now working to overcome the obstacles so we can get back to normal," Gen. Bashir told the Qatari newspaper Al-Raya. 19: Pro-government forces have captured an area in southern Sudan's East Equatoria province in fierce fighting with the SPLA, a senior regional official announced today. Mr Riek Machar, the chairman of the South Sudan Co-ordination Council, said in a statement that the South Sudan Defence Force (SSDF) on Tuesday captured the Solora mountain area near Torit, after a battle of several hours in which the rebels suffered heavy losses in men and materials. 19: The Sudanese government and a Russian company, Lukoil, have signed a US$30 million oil pipeline construction agreement to link the Hajlij oil field with Ubaid refinery, the Sudanese news agency reported. Energy and Mining Minister Dr. Awad Ahmad al-Jaz said investment in oil production was a vital strategic goal for Khartoum. 23: President El-Bashir has issued a decree naming Col. Ibrahim Shams-Eddin as state Minister for Defence. Col Shams-Eddin served on the 15-man military council that ruled the country after El-Bashir took power in a military coup in 1989. 30: Sudan will hold a referendum on a draft Constitution in April, the parliament speaker, Dr Hassan Abdallah al-Turabi, has said. "The Constitution will encompass all present and future issues in a way that it cannot be amended by governments as they wish," Dr Turabi told recently-elected governors of the south Sudanese states in a meeting. 31: Mr Turabi is willing to meet exiled foes, according to a reconciliation group spokesman. An envoy from the body lobbying for reconciliation between the government and the opposition in exile said that Dr Turabi had announced that: "I am ready to meet anybody, (including former premier) Sadek el-Mahdi, who is bound to me with intellectual and familial ties." 31: Egypt and Sudan will pursue efforts to eliminate obstacles hampering the normalisation of their relations as a high-ranking Egyptian delegation ended a visit in Khartoum, a Sudanese official said yesterday. The Sudanese junior minister for foreign affairs, Mr Mustafa Osman Ismail, was quoted by the official SUNA news agency as saying that the two sides had noted "the need to make a greater effort to remove obstacles hindering the normalisation of bilateral relation." January 1: Sudanese jurists have called for enhanced freedoms under the new constitution being drafted, saying freedom "should be the focal point" of the document, a Khartoum daily reported today. Akhbar al Youm daily said a jurists' conference yesterday sought a presidential system with direct popular election and an independent judiciary under the new constitution. 1: Gen. El-Bashir has sacked a top defence official who headed an unpopular government drive to train students for war, a newspaper reported yesterday. Mr Omar Abdel-Maarouf, a State Minister for Defence, was in charge of the Defence Ministry department that oversaw compulsory military training for thousands of students. Some were sent to war fronts in the south, where government forces were battling rebels. 1: Police on Thursday dispersed a demonstration by about 200 Sudanese university students protesting over a student union election. The pro-government Alwan daily said about 200 students from El Nilein University had marched to United Nations Square in Khartoum, where police dispersed them peacefully. 1: Sudan's national security and defence council has made arrangements to defend territorial integrity against foreign troop movements and threats, press reports said in Khartoum today. Security, intelligence, political and diplomatic measures have all been taken in view of statements by the US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who toured Africa in mid-December and was said by the junta in Khartoum to have called for its overthrow. 1: Government troops have in the past few days recaptured the Solora mountains area south of Torit in southern Sudan from rebel forces which had been backed by "physical foreign support," according to Government spokesman Brigadier Al-Tayeb Ibrahim Mohammed Khair. He added that government troops had seized large quantities of military hardware, including three new tanks, field guns and machine guns of different calibres and ammunition. 1: Sudanese Member of Parliament Mousa Hussein Dirar said in a statement today that a member of Britain's House of Lords, Baroness Caroline Cox, last week paid a secret visit to sites which have been held by rebels since January, close to the border with Eritrea. Mr Dirar claimed that Ms Cox had entered Sudan from Eritrea, which is home to Sudanese political opponents of the Islamic fundamentalist-backed junta in Khartoum, for a tour of the rebel-held regions and held talks with opposition forces and civilians. 2: President El-Bashir, in an address to mark Thursday's independence day celebrations, denounced US sanctions against his country. State television quoted him as saying Sudan "rejects the behaviour of sanctions and isolation" practised by the US, which imposed economic sanctions on Sudan in November for its alleged support of terrorism and human rights abuses. 3: Egypt still suspects Sudan of harbouring Egyptian Muslim militants, a senior government official said in a newspaper interview published in Cairo today. "We think that some terrorist elements are still in Sudan and fundamentalist activities are present," Mr Ossama al-Baz, President Hosni Mubarak's political advisor, told the government weekly Al-Ahram Al-Arabi. 3: Sudan said today that 1,787 soldiers of the SPLA had given themselves up to government forces in the last two days. The official news agency SUNA quoted an unnamed source in the armed forces as saying that 687 SPLA soldiers, including seven officers, had surrendered with their weapons on Wednesday in the Mr Maryal Bay area of the southern region of Bahr al-Ghazal. 6: Pro-government south Sudanese officials said today the victory for incumbent Daniel arap Moi in Kenya's presidential elections is good news for the peace process in south Sudan. The Akhbar al-Youm daily today quoted officials of the South Sudanese United Democratic Salvation Front (UDSF) as saying Moi's re-election would guarantee continuing efforts to reach peace. 7: Dr Turabi has criticised the country's outlawed political parties, but at the same time predicted that parties will be re-established. Dr. Turabi, the religious power behind the military junta in Khartoum, launched a ferocious attack on "sectarian" parties in the maiden issue of a new paper, Al-Usbou (The Week), published today. 8: Factions in south Sudan which earlier made peace with the government have agreed to unify all troops under the South Sudan Defence Force (SSDF), an official statement said today. The statement from former rebel Riek Machar, now chairman of the South Sudan Co-ordination Council, came as press reports spoke of defections from the SPLA to government ranks. 8: The official al Anbaa daily reported today that 150 SPLA men had surrendered to government forces in the Abyei area of west Kordofan, on the administrative border with south Sudan. First Vice-President Al Zubair Mohammed Salih and Defence Minister Hassan Abdul Rahman Ali were said to be in Bahr el Ghazal supervising arrangements to accommodate more than 7,000 civilians and armed rebels who reportedly deserted from the SPLA last week. 10: Uganda and Sudan are entering a third year of strained diplomatic relations after severing diplomatic ties in April 1995. The rebellion in northern Uganda and the raging battles between Sudanese government soldiers and the SPLA have crystallised the sour relations. 11: The Sudanese opposition must lay down its arms before there can be true reconciliation, Dr. Turabi said in an interview published in Khartoum today. "The march towards national accord must begin with abstention from arms which aggravate discord," Dr Turabi told the Akhbar al Youm daily. 12: Dr Turabi will visit Egypt on Wednesday as the two neighbouring countries move closer to normalising ties, a pro-government and pro-Islamic daily said on Sunday. The visit by Dr Turabi will coincide with a meeting of the Arab Parliamentary Union on Wednesday in the southern resort of Luxor, Alwan newspaper said. 13: A Sudanese minister said today that Sudan's long-strained relations with Egypt were improving, but more had to be done before any visit to Cairo by President El-Bashir. "We feel that there is improvement in relations," State Minister for Foreign Affairs Mustafa Osman Ismail told reporters after meeting Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa. 13: Sudan plans to integrate thousands of reported defectors from a southern rebel militia into its armed forces, a Khartoum newspaper said today. The private al-Rai-Aam quoted Gen. Mohammed Salih as saying that those who had come over to the government from the SPLA would be absorbed into "organised forces to widen the circle of peace." Gen. Al-Zubeir. Khartoum: Catholic Club Confiscated The Government of Sudan confiscated the Catholic Club of Khartoum. The order, signed on December 6th, 1997 and notified to the Catholic Church on December 22nd, was implemented on December 31st, 1997. The Catholic Club, one of the many set up by various organisations and associations, was built in the early sixties at the outskirts of Khartoum on the area allotted to them by the town planners for social, sports and cultural activities. For decades the Catholic Club played host to various activities of the Catholic Community. Its basketball team was one of the best in Sudan and supplied the national team with many outstanding players. During the eighties the Club became the favourite study place for the many students who had no facilities at home. In May 1992 some agents of the Security stormed into the club, arrested the young people studying in the premises and took them to detention, confiscated Ls 60,000 from the Club safe and the 22 type writers of the typist school. The youth were released a day later without being charged of any crime; the money and the typewriters were never returned. At various times the lawyer of the Catholic Ch - - - - - - - - - - - Distributed by Sudan Infonet An Information Service of the Sudan Working Group--USA SudanInfonet@compuserve.com 1/16/98 1:00 PM