Bashir calls opponents for talks

SUDAN'S President Omar al-Bashir on Thursday urged opponents to join him in "national dialogue" talks, days after it was announced he would be seeking to extend his 25-year rule.

Bashir, who took power in a 1989 coup, was named the presidential candidate for the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) on Tuesday, ahead of a presidential vote due next April.

The 70-year-old is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged war crimes in the violence-plagued Darfur region and has been accused of jailing opponents and limiting press freedom.

He has been pressing sceptical opponents to take part in a "national dialogue" and repeated that call to party faithful at a congress in Khartoum.

"Dialogue is the only way to solve the problems about power sharing," he said, after his arrival at the congress was greeted with cries of "Allahu abkar!" (God is greater) and "There is no choice but Bashir!"

Bashir admitted the Sudanese people were "tired" after years of economic problems and conflict.

He said the country's 2011 split with South Sudan had hit Khartoum's finances particularly hard.

"We faced the division from South Sudan, which had a negative impact on our economy and (caused) a shortage of resources," he said.

Bashir oversaw South Sudan's split from the north under a peace deal that ended a 22-year civil war. The division left Sudan without most of the formerly united country's 470,000 barrels per day of oil production.

Bashir first appealed in January for a wide-ranging dialogue with political opponents and armed insurgents in Darfur.

But the arrest soon afterwards of several political figures as well as press censorship raised questions about the regime's commitment to change.

Critics have said the dialogue is a way for the NCP to hold on to power without addressing Sudan's problems.

Bashir called again Thursday for insurgents from different regions in Sudan, including Darfur, to come to the table, urging them to "respond to the nation's call and to participate in the dialogue in order to achieve consensus."

Some 300,000 people have been killed in Darfur and two million forced to flee since non-Arab rebels rose up against the Arab-dominated regime in 2003, the UN says.

The government puts the death toll at 10,000.

One of the main Darfur rebel groups, the Justice and Equality Movement, lashed out at Bashir's re-nomination earlier, saying it "confirms he is a dictator".

Hassan al-Turabi, a key Islamist behind the coup that brought Bashir to power, also attended the congress on Thursday.

A power struggle with Bashir saw Turabi dismissed from the NCP leadership a decade after the coup, but the two met for the first time in March.

Bashir has been courting Turabi's Popular Congress Party as part of the dialogue.

AFP