Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will not comment on the comments, but I would just say that I was reminded or persuaded by some of the remarks of Ali el Haj and now of Diriage to dwell a bit on some of the experiences we had in the peace process. Incidently Diriage's reference to people being pressured to give up power reminded me of Babo Nimr's comment when he was asked by Abdel Rahman Abu Zeit [Vice Chancellor of Juba University]: "Chief, you have had power for so long, why don't you leave it for us, the young generation?" And Babo Nimr said: "Son, power is like a stick. If you put it down, someone will pick it up and hit you with it." But let me be a little more intimate in reflecting on some of the experiences we had in dealing with some of the questions Ali el Haj was asking. I said to the Prime Minister: "You know, here you are a democracy, and SPLA is an armed struggle, how do you come together? Who will give in to what and who will give in to the other? Which system will give in to the other?" And his answer was rather interesting, he said: "You know, we are a democracy, but a flexible democracy, and we will adjust democracy to accommodate the other side if we should agree." I posed the same question to Garang, and his answer was quite close to that, too, that "if people agree, we are not holding arms and sticking to the idea that we must govern. We will concede to whatever people would come to as an agreement." I asked the Prime Minister: " Here is the movement, and the leadership of the movement, is recognized as a leadership which can claim to be a national leadership. And they have a formidable army. What can you possibly offer the leadership of the SPLA that would make peace worth their while, and give up arms? And what could you afford to give without undermining your constituency which is religiously based." Again his answer was, I thought, quite constructive, because he said that "there is no doubt that the problem we have had with the south is lack of a leadership that can deliver, and that our problems would be much easier if we had a leadership that one could deal with and that could deliver. And I believe that SPLA has overshadowed other leaderships and is the leadership now that one could deal with. Besides they have overshadowed the political parties inside the country." Now, these are not the sort of thing that the Prime Minister would say to the media, publicly, but I think it is significant that he made that comment. I went to the leadership of the SPLA and said, "Well, this is what the man says. If that came about would you say, no, we rather fight until we get it by force, or would you accept that leadership?" Again I thought the response was quite encouraging.
Now, the question of religion and its linkage to identity. I am one of those who have always felt very strongly that the divisive issues on identity are based on myths of identity, myths which, if we removed them, the reality would surface that we have much more in common. But I have over the years reflected on this and felt that maybe myths are just as important as realities, and that one should not underestimate the power and the realism in the myths. Now, if you take the countries that were mentioned in Africa, were people might be Muslims by the majority and yet they were able to have Christian leaders, as in Senegal. Or you go to Sierra Leone where they say that 85% are Muslims, and yet they have leaders who are Christians and the issue does not arise. Or you go to Tanzania where Nyerere said to Nimeiri: " Mr. President, it is only two days ago -" (this was when there was the war between Tanzania and Uganda, and the question was whether Nimeiri was being suspected of sympathies for Amin because of religion - Nimeiri too was seen as taking Tanzania to be hostile to Amin because of being a Muslim and that sort of thing) - and Nyerere said " you know, it is only two or three days ago that I learned that my commander in chief is a Muslim, I had never known that. It did not matter at all to us, whether he was a Muslim or a Christian." Now, I think we have to ask ourselves the question, why is it that in these African countries religion has remained separate from politics and from issues of racial and cultural identities? I think that in our own situation, let us be realistic and recognize that the link between Arabic as a language, Arab culture, religion, Islam, have all combined to add to the racial dimension, so that when a Sudanese says I am an Arab, you look at him and you know obviously that is a fiction, if any at all that is Arab. But at the same time, if he is sophisticated about the political situation, he may say, look, within the Arab circles, he would say, I am an Arab. And I remember going to Egypt on my way to Germany with a group of Sudanese students in the early 60's and some high-school students in Cairo ran after us saying "Lumumba, Lumumba" because they assumed we were from some African country. One of us got somewhat upset and he turned to them and said: "Brothers, we are Arabs like you" whereupon they said : " welcome brothers from the Sudan." Because as soon as you said you were an Arab like them you must be a Sudanese. So I think, whatever the realities of our looks, as a function of the mind some of us have come to believe that as a matter of culture, of language, of race, we are Arabs. Now, within the African circles they would then say, wait a minute, who is an Arab? We are Africans. So it is a kind of thing that we can use in all situations and get away with it, and we can be very clever about it. But cleverness is not going to unite us. It is a question of searching within us and saying - should we say that some of us, as a function of the mind, if not the reality, do believe we are Arabs, and this is so important to us, we want to hold to it, and therefore deal with one another on the basis that some of us are Arabs, whatever the realities, we feel Arab, we think Arab, or are we going to say, wait a minute, let us really remove these issues that divide us, like whether racially we are Arabs, or religiously Muslims or Christians, put away the things that divide us and build the nation on the things that unite us. I think today religion has become a symbol of many of the things we were talking about. Ali el Haj was telling me last night that if we remove religion and discuss powersharing, sharing of resources, and all that, maybe we could get to the crux of the matter, and he is right. But it is very difficult today for people to generally forget religion and say, let us talk about powersharing, let us talk about resource sharing, because somehow religion has become symbolic of identity, of power sharing, even of the management control of our resources, and certainly of the culture that gives us our sense of who we are and to whom we relate to in the world. So I would say that while religion may not, if taken seriously to be a factor, we have to recognize the fact that it has been made a factor, it has become the symbolic embodiment of all these other issues that we talk about. Can we therefore persuade ourselves to put it aside so that we can then deal with real issues that divide us? Thank you.
