REGIONAL - Former southern rebels in Sudan have suspended their involvement in the national unity government. The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) said its northern partners had failed to implement parts of a 2005 deal that ended a 21-year civil war.

These include boundary demarcations and the redeployment of northern troops from the south.

South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir warned recently there could be a return to war if the deal was not kept to.

Some 1.5 million people died in the conflict - Africa’s longest civil war - which pitted the mainly Muslim north against the Animist and Christian south before the comprehensive peace agreement (CPA) was agreed.

By press time, only government response has come from the spokesman at Sudan’s London embassy, who said he was disappointed at the development but it was not a death blow to the CPA.

"It is a suspension, not a withdrawal as earlier reported by some news agencies,” Khalid Al Mubarak told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme.

It is a suspension which is temporary and, pending discussions, hopefully this cloud will disappear.”
BBC