South Sudan forms autonomous government after deal

KHARTOUM (Reuters) – South Sudan has formed an autonomous
government as part of a January peace deal that ended more than
two decades of civil war in Africa’s largest country, a senior
official said on Sunday.

The former southern rebel Sudan People’s Liberation
Movement (SPLM) signed the deal with the Islamist northern
government to set up a federal system, wealth sharing,
transition to democracy and a referendum on southern secession
after six years.

“It was formed yesterday (Saturday) evening and is composed
of about 20 ministers,” SPLM spokesman Walid Hamid said.

The government includes a ministry for the wife of former
SPLM leader John Garang, who was killed in a helicopter crash
three weeks after taking office as first vice president in what
many saw as a setback to the peace process.

Garang’s wife Rebecca, praised for her public steadfastness
following his death, has won the ministry for roads and
transport that commands a large budget to build infrastructure
in the devastated south where there are few tarmac roads.

Under the deal the SPLM dominates the southern government,
taking 70 percent of ministries, with the ruling northern party
the National Congress Party (NCP) and other southern forces
each taking 15 percent.

The southern government will begin work immediately, Hamid
said, and will sit in the southern capital Juba. It will run
the affairs of the south, which has its own army and banking
system.

But Hamid said implementation of the agreement was not
running smoothly and the two parties had reached an impasse
over the administration of Khartoum state, which includes the
national capital and millions of northerners and southerners.

“We could not reach any understanding,” Hamid said. “We
differed on the basic definition of Khartoum — they call it a
northern state, we say it’s the national capital,” he added.

The civil war claimed 2 million lives, mostly from famine
and disease and forced more than 4 million from their homes.

It broadly pitted the mostly southern and animist rebels
against the Khartoum-based government, but was complicated by
issues of oil, ethnicity and ideology.

The southern deal does not cover a conflict in Sudan’s
western Darfur region, or a smaller rebellion in the east.