Dividing Sudan into Federal States Solves its Problems
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Alexandria—
The BA held a seminar on Saturday, 7 July 2007, entitled "Sudan: Challenges and Development Prospects in the Nile Valley", by Dr. Bashir El-Bakri, Former Sudan Ambassador in Paris and Dr. Eglal Raafat, Professor of Political Sciences, Faculty of Economics and Political Sciences, Cairo University. The seminar was chaired by Mr. Hany Raslan, Editor, Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Al-Ahram.
Bashir started his talk by praising the positive role played by the BA, as a beacon of thought and culture not only in Egypt, but in the entire world. On the subject of the seminar, he stated that successive governments in Sudan failed in containing the cultural diversity in the country, which resulted into the problems of the south, Darfur, and other regions.
He believes that "regionalism" is the best practice to solve Sudan's problems. Dividing Sudan into regions, each has its own government, under the rule of a single federal government, like the case in Germany and Switzerland, will lead to ceasing fire internally and will eventually result into to the unity of Sudan.
Bashir expressed his support to Darfur and its right to a government ruling its affairs within a federal context as part of Sudan, he also referred to the fact that Darfur was an independent state centuries ago.
He mentioned that the most important subject on the Accra African Union Summit's agenda was establishing "United African States", a matter that divided African countries into pros and cons, and thus, the option of unity is very difficult and unlikely under the ethnic and cultural diversity in Africa.
Within the same framework, Bashir emphasized the importance of the Nile Valley initiative, including ten countries, on top of which is Egypt and Sudan; and added that a huge amount of the Nile water is left unexploited, and thus regional cooperation is very important in this respect, stressing that the Nile must be a source of peace rather than conflicts and wars.
Eglal Raafat stated that the internal crisis in Sudan is a result of cultural pluralism, and that the notion of citizenship is always threatened by the acceptance of the other. She added that the solution for Sudan's problem requires generations and generations brought up on the concept of citizenship.
On the international system, she said that Sudan is now on the agenda of the USA in what is called "war on terrorism", due to many reasons including the mineral and petroleum wealth in Sudan, as well as its distinguished geographical site.
At the end of her talk, Eglal Raafat raised a question on whether the Sudanese government will accept to relinquish part of its authority and participate with other political powers on the internal arena to solve the ongoing crisis, especially with the forthcoming of legislative and presidential elections in Sudan, in addition to the self determination right for the South in 2011.