Ali Karti: Bashir ‘the only person trusted’
Sudan’s foreign minister on the state of his country and whether Omar al-Bashir will stand for re-election next year.
He is one of the world’s longest serving leaders – and one of the most controversial. President Omar al-Bashir has ruled Sudan for a quarter of a century.
The future I can see is in co-existence - not in partitioning, not in keeping Abiye even to the North, not keeping it to the South. The co-existence will also help both countries how to enhance it, how to handle it.
He was also the first serving world leader to be indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes. Bashir has refused to travel to The Hague where the court wants him to stand trial on three counts of genocide during the war in the western region of Darfur.
Sudan faces a presidential election next year. Bashir said earlier this year that he would not stand again, but now the ruling party has again proposed him as their candidate.
Sudan remains a place of political unrest and violence. Freed from British and Egyptian rule in 1956, the country experienced a long-running conflict between the predominantly Arab North and Christian South.
This eventually led to a partition of the country when South Sudan seceded in 2011. But the tension with the South is still festering, with bombing raids along the border and tension surrounding the disputed city of Abiye.
In the bloody conflict in the Darfur region, more than 2,5 million people were displaced and more than 400,000 killed since 2003. It is regarded by many as one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters.
Add to this economic uncertainties which spilled into the streets in September last year, when angry demonstrators were confronting the government after its decision to cut fuel subsidies.
On Talk to Al Jazeera, we speak to one of the president’s closest allies, foreign minister Ali Karti, to find out whether Omar al-Bashir will stand for re-election in 2015. How does he view the huge problems his nation is facing? Is the current regime to blame? And what will the future bring for Sudan?