Hearing the news today of the delivery of a “Framework Agreement” for political partnership and security arrangements in the now-under-siege Nuba Mountains and the threatened Blue Nile State signed by the National Congress Party (NCP) regime in Khartoum and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement- North (SPLM-N), I was immediately reminded of this Monty Python sketch.
In addition to being as useless as any other agreement signed by Khartoum, this one is actually very detrimental to the people of Blue Nile State and the Nuba Mountains (called South Kordofan by the Arabs). It abrogates (hmm, the principle of abrogation at work outside of the Koran!) the provisions of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that assured that Blue Nile and South Kordofan States would be given the right to a Popular Consultation by their leadership after a free and fair election and that the Popular Consultation would give them the opportunity to become autonomous regions, or to remain with the Northern government. These people, in the words of Ambassador Roger Winter, “have been sold down the river.”
The full text of the agreement is here.