{"id":39173,"date":"2019-04-29T03:23:08","date_gmt":"2019-04-29T03:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=39173"},"modified":"2019-04-29T03:23:08","modified_gmt":"2019-04-29T03:23:08","slug":"sudan-army-agree-to-share-power-with-civilians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=39173","title":{"rendered":"Sudan army agree to share power with civilians"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nKHARTOUM: Sudanese protesters Sunday welcomed a breakthrough in talks with army rulers who agreed to form a joint civilian-military council, paving the way for a civilian administration as demanded by demonstrators.
Saturday\u2019s agreement would replace the existing 10-member military council that took power after the army ousted veteran leader Omar Al-Bashir on April 11 amid massive protests.
\u201cWhat happened yesterday is a step to have a civilian authority,\u201d said Mohamed Amin, one of thousands of demonstrators who have been camped for weeks outside headquarters.
\u201cWe are happy by the progress in the talks, but we are still waiting for the composing of the council and the civilian government.\u201d
The joint civilian-military council will be the overall ruling body, while a new transitional civilian government is expected to be formed to run the day to day affairs of the country, a key demand of protesters.
That civilian government will work toward having the first post-Bashir elections.
\u201cWhen we have a civilian government, then we can say our country is on the right track,\u201d said Amin.
The demonstrators said they will pursue their sit-in until a civilian administration is set up.
\u201cLast night\u2019s agreement is a step forward in the stability of our country. But I don\u2019t think we will leave the sit-in until we achieve our demand of a civilian government,\u201d said protester Sawsan Bashir.
Protest leader Ahmed Al-Rabia confirmed to AFP the decision of forming a joint council.
\u201cWe are now in consultation about what percentage of the council should be represented by civilians and how much by the military,\u201d said Rabia, who is involved in talks.
Activists say the new council could be a 15-member body, with eight civilians and seven army generals.
The decision to have a joint council came after hours-long talks on Saturday, the first such by a joint committee representing the current ruling military leadership and protesters.
Bashir was ousted by the army after months of protests against his three-decade rule.
Thousands of demonstrators, braving volleys of tear gas fired by security forces, reached the sprawling military headquarters on April 6, demanding that the army support those opposing Bashir.
Five days later, the army toppled Bashir but then took power into its own hands through a 10-member transitional military council.
Protest leaders had previously held several rounds of inconclusive talks with the military council since Bashir was ousted.
The military council has so far insisted that it has assumed power for a two-year transitional period.
Western governments have expressed support for protesters\u2019 demands, but Sudan\u2019s key Gulf Arab lenders have backed the military council, while African states have called for more time for the army to hand over to civilians.
Buses bringing protesters kept arriving Saturday at the protest site, with hundreds of protesters coming from the eastern province of Kassala, an AFP photographer said.
As the joint committee met on Saturday, top opposition leader and former premier Sadiq Al-Mahdi told reporters Sudan should \u201cimmediately\u201d join the International Criminal Court.
Bashir is wanted by The Hague-based tribunal for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for his alleged role in the conflict in Darfur, but the 75-year-old has repeatedly denied the charges against him.
The war in Darfur erupted in 2003 when ethnic minority rebels took up arms against Khartoum\u2019s Arab-dominated government, accusing it of social and political marginalization.
The United Nations says about 300,000 people have died in the conflict, with another 2.5 million displaced, many of them still living in miserable camps across the western region of the country.
Protest group spokesman Amjad Farid told reporters that Bashir and other regime figures could be tried in Sudan.
\u201cWe are not seeking retaliatory measures against them, but we want to rebuild our justice system to hold them accountable for their crimes,\u201d he said.
Mahdi, who was forced from office by Bashir in a 1989 coup, said the army\u2019s ouster of Bashir was \u201cnot a military coup.\u201d
But he warned that Bashir cronies were still clinging on to power despite the upheaval.
\u201cThe toppled regime might still try to do a coup,\u201d he said without elaborating.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KHARTOUM: Sudanese protesters Sunday welcomed a breakthrough in talks with army rulers who agreed to form a joint civilian-military council, paving the way for a civilian administration as demanded by demonstrators.Saturday\u2019s agreement would replace the existing 10-member military council that took power after the army ousted veteran leader Omar Al-Bashir on April 11 amid massive…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":39174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}