The head of the National Umma Party (NUP) and president of Nidaa Sudan, Sadiq al-Mahdi, confirmed the readiness of the coalition to hold dialogue with the government of President Omar al-Bashir.
Mahdi told Asharq Al-Awsat that dialogue with the government "is taking place through the African mechanism," describing the unification of the opposition as "utopian".
Mahdi said there were several conditions to coordinate with opposition forces, such as rejecting any quest to oust the regime by force, sidestepping demands of self-determination, avoiding seeking support from Israel, or standing against the opposition.
Asking Mahdi whether he thinks the government will arrest him once he goes back to the country, he said that "the government has gotten used to dealing with us inconsistently... It offered us participatation in the highest levels and highest ratios, but we rejected any participation that is not based on just and comprehensive peace and democratic transformation.
Now the government has issued six notices against me, Mahdi added.
The newspaper said that the power balance is now in favor of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir while the opposition is inactive, however, Mahdi questioned the standards of the balance of power denouncing the fact that the regime, and after 30 years, has failed in all fields and is now on the verge of an economic bankruptcy.
Responding to the newspaper’s question whether there is an initiative to unite the opposition forces, he stressed that such an aspiration is far from reality but the bulk part of the opposition is Nidaa Sudan and it is coherent.
Speaking about the reconciliation with president Gaafar al-Nimeiry (1969, 1985) mid-seventies and the current agreements with Bashir not to mention the criticism for dealing with the military systems, Mahdi said that only illusionists refused dialogue with the systems. He stressed that the national strugglers held a dialogue with the foreign occupation countries from which transformation to independence resulted.
Asking how he viewed the future of Sudan amid the internally, regionally and internationally complex conditions, Mahdi said that the Sudanese human capital is perfect as well as the natural resources. Mahdi continued that the political forces agree on two significant matters: steadiness and forgiveness that make the ideologists more lenient than others outside Sudan. These components can achieve an agreement similar to the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) or a peaceful revolution such as October revolution 1964, he added.
