(PNS) A former Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) missionary has been named one of 12 special advisors to the president of the interim government of a united Sudan.
Haruun Ruun, 65, a former executive director of the New Sudan Council of Churches, left mid-January for Khartoum, where he will assume his new post immediately. Ruun was appointed by President Omar al-Bashir.
After more than 50 years of civil strife, Sudan’s power-sharing government functions as a confederation of two states. The predominantly Muslim north operates on religious or Sharia law, while the mostly black, mostly Christian south has a secular government.
More than two million Sudanese have been killed in the last two decades of the war, and more than twice that many have been forced from their homes. The unity model was advocated by John Garang, a Presbyterian former guerrilla leader who unified warring southern tribes to negotiate with Khartoum. Garang was killed in a helicopter crash last August, weeks after he was sworn in as the coalition government’s vice president.
Elections scheduled for 2009 will install a central government. Two years later, southerners will vote in a referendum to stay with the unity government or create a separate nation.
