| Written by Reuters | |
| Monday, 24 August 2009 |
The international community has been increasingly worried about fighting between southern tribes that has claimed at least 950 lives this year, mostly women and children, in bloody attacks on entire villages by heavily armed tribal groups.
Khartoum's National Congress Party (NCP) and the former southern rebel group, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), signed a peace deal in 2005 that ended more than 20 years of vicious north-south war, Reuters reports.
The south was given a share in national oil revenues as well as its own government, headed by the former rebels that also took seats in the national parliament.
"Yes they are arming, even as the Government of Southern Sudan (GOSS) has disarmed civilians," SPLM Spokesperson Yien Matthew said.
"The National Congress (Party) has been arming militia groups to cause instability in south Sudan (and) has also been arming civilians," Pagan Amum, Secretary General of the SPLM told journalists in the southern capital Juba.
Speaking after a high-level SPLM meeting, Amum said that the party had laid out a plan to stop the movement of guns into the south that included monitoring of the north-south border and continuing civilian disarmament.
Inter-tribal fighting, often over cattle, takes place annually but the south's President Salva Kiir has blamed the recent intensification on unnamed agitators that he said were trying to show that the south is unable to govern itself ahead of the 2011 referendum.
The worst of this year's tribal fighting took place in the south's Jonglei State between the Murle and Lou Nuer tribes. Yien said that the SPLM believed Khartoum may have had a hand in this, but did not give details.
Speaking more generally, Matthew said guns bearing a logo of a Khartoum manufacturer had been found in the south.
Guns proliferated amongst southern communities during the 22 year north-south war, which saw tribal groups pitted against each other in some of the bloodiest fighting.
Some tribal militias were supported by Khartoum.
Amum said that the NCP was also arming civilians "all over" northern Sudan, including in the western Darfur region where a six-year-old war continues.
"This is very dangerous plan to cause the collapse and instability all over the country and we call on the National Congress to review this policy, to stop it," Amum said.
He called for Sudan- wide disarmament and the strengthening of law enforcement
agencies.
Amum's statements came one day after the SPLM and NCP signed a new agreement promising to hasten the demarcation of the contentious north-south border, as well as seeking to resolve other sticking points in the north-south deal.
