The JPF and warning of devil’s agreement!

Alintibaha.net/ file!

Both governments of Sudan and South Sudan have commended and praised each other on the “breakthrough” they achieved during their recent talks in Khartoum, expressing their commitment to fulfill the deal they reached last week on border security and economic relations which included the oil exports from South Sudan via Port-Sudan. 

An optimistic-sounding South Sudan's chief negotiator Pagan Amum was pleased to announce that his country may resume oil exports through Sudan within two or three weeks, with expressing some reservation on the need for a smoother approach to fully implement the agreement reached. 

However, there are always those who do not want the peace between the two countries, and they ironically call themselves “The Just Peace Forum” (JPF)!

The leader of JPF, who is the uncle of the president Bashir and owner of the Al-intibaha Arabic-daily, Altieb Mustafa used to deliver, through his wide-distributed and best-selling paper!-his negative critique and propaganda against all the agreements signed between the two countries.

Yesterday, I came by coincidence, while crossing the airport street to the paper offices, to see pig banners in which the JPF wrote the phrase “Take care of making agreement with the devil” and in other banners warned directly from making “deal with Pagan”! Pointing to the previous agreements reached by the two governments.

I’m not going to defend Pagan or even our side’ negotiator Idrees Abdulgadir, who was also attacked by the JPD!, or to defend anyone else here; however, what I’m trying to say is that the media’s role here, I think, is not to attack officials as individuals, but is to talk about the commitment of the reached agreements, since the two governments were responsible for the failure to implement the signed agreements.

It is now, the responsibility of the media outlets to support such important agreements by playing a positive and constructive role, in reading and interpreting the output of these agreements and keeping away from the negative critique and propaganda for the peace and security of the two countries, for the peace of the region and for the international community. 

We hope that this time the two governments would really implement these important agreements and that they will not be just an ink on paper! And that the two parties will continue their efforts in order to reach a final agreement and finding solutions to the future of the other disputed and claimed areas and the status of Abyei.

As I always called, let us forget about the past, look ahead and take practical steps towards dealing with the new reality in order to build distinctive neighbourly relations based on coordination and cooperation to serve common interests between the two countries.