Former southern Sudan rebels dismayed at president's comments that Khartoum ready for war, if necessary

November 18, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — Former rebels from southern Sudan voiced deep dismay Sunday at the Sudanese president's comments that Khartoum is ready to go back to war if necessary.

A 2005 peace agreement ended decades of civil war between north and south Sudan, but the deal appears increasingly shaky since southern Cabinet ministers walked out of the national unity government last month in protest.

President Omar al-Bashir raised tensions on Saturday when he told a rally to celebrate a paramilitary force that his government was not looking for war but warned that those who want to bring war to the north "should bear the consequences."

"We will not seek war, but if imposed on us we are ready," he said.

The Sudanese People's Liberation Movement said in a statement that it was committed to peace and does not want to return to war.

The SPLM/SPLA "would like to express its deep regret for the statements issued by he leadership of the National Congress in which they threaten to go back to war," according to a statement by the spokesman for the SPLM, Pagan Amum, that was published in the Arabic daily Akhbar Alyoum on Sunday.

But the powerful leader in the ruling National Congress Party, Nafie Ali Nafie, downplayed al-Bashir's comments, telling the independent daily Akhir Lahaza that "our relations with the SPLM will never go to the brink of collapse."

Al-Bashir's allusions to the government's capacity to wage war came as Sudan is facing its biggest political crisis since the end of the civil war between the Arab and Muslim-dominated north and the mainly Christian and animist black southerners, which claimed some 2 million lives.

The SPLM accuses Khartoum of multiple breaches to the 2005 peace deal, including not sharing the country's oil wealth as agreed, not pulling troops out of southern Sudan, and remilitarizing contested border zones where the main oil reserves are located.

A return to fighting across central and southern Sudan would likely exacerbate the ongoing conflict in the western Darfur region, where more than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million been displaced in more than four years.