Khartoum, October 05: Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir on Monday invited the country’s opposition for talks aimed at avoiding clashes in next year’s general election, a week after they threatened to boycott it.
“We wish to have general elections without violence. I invite all the parties to a dialogue… in order to reach a positive climate to hold elections,” Beshir told parliament.
Africa’s largest country is to hold presidential, parliamentary and local elections in April 2010, its first general election since 1986.
After Beshir’s coup in 1989, subsequent votes were slammed as a sham by the country’s opposition.
Southern former rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), who now share a unity government with Beshir’s National Congress Party, and other opposition parties last week threatened to boycott elections if the laws guaranteeing basic freedoms are not passed by November 30.
After its decades-long north-south civil war, Sudan adopted an interim constitution guaranteeing freedoms but the text clashed with old laws that remain in place.
“We will receive the laws and harmonise them with the consitution,” Beshir said, adding that a new national commission for human rights will also be formed.
—Agencies