A four-day All Political Party Conference was held in Juba last week and ended with a threat from opposition leaders to boycott national elections scheduled for April 2010 if the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) fails to enact a number of key democratic reforms by the end of November.

Organized by the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), the conference was attended by 28 political parties and five civil society organizations. The NCP snubbed the parley.

Participants issued a five-page Juba Declaration on Dialogue and National Consensus that disputed the results of last year's national census and called for the formation of a truth and reconciliation committee to investigate human rights violations and atrocities that have been committed since Sudan became independent in 1956.

The communiqué specifically demanded the amendment of several laws covering national security issues, trade unions, press freedoms and criminal procedures before elections can go forward next year.

The conference drew several prominent foes of the government of President Omar Al-Bashir like former prime minister Sadiq Al-Mahdi of the Umma Party, Hassan Al-Turabi of the Popular Congress Party and Sudanese Communist Party leader Ibrahim Nugud.

The NCP roundly condemned the meeting as a thinly veiled attempt to forge a broad alliance of groups against the ruling party, adding it would hinder implementation of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

In his closing remarks, SPLM chairperson and Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS) President Salva Kiir Mayardit blasted three avowedly separatist parties from the south that walked out of the conference on the second day of proceedings.

"When the SPLM/A (Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army) was fighting with the Khartoum government, those people who walked out were in Khartoum," said the GoSS leader.

One of those parties, the Union of Sudan African Parties 2, later endorsed the conference's final resolution.

GoSS President Kiir also pledged to abide by the outcome of the 2011 referendum vote even if the results do not reflect his own preference.

"If I want unity of the country and I cast my vote in the unity box and if you all cast your votes for separation, then the south would separate," he told the delegates. "It will be your choice as southerners to determine your future destiny...and not the SPLM or its leadership or any other political parties."