Nairobi - A power struggle between President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and the leader of Sudan's ruling party marks the beginning of the end of the Islamist regime that took power in a 1989 coup, the main Sudanese rebel faction says.
John Garang, leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), said he welcomed the recent events in Khartoum, not because they would bring a change in policy but because they had paralysed the government.
Bashir imposed a three-month state of emergency last Sunday and dissolved parliament in a bid to sideline his former ally Hassan al-Turabi, speaker of parliament and secretary-general of the ruling National Congress Party.
Garang, in a statement issued in the Kenyan capital Nairobi on Friday night, said Bashir and his allies were even more hardline than their rivals and that this week's developments represented no change in the regime.
"However, the crisis has reached a point of no return, and marks the beginning of the end of the NIF (National Islamic Front) and its regime," Garang said.
Turabi has described Bashir's measures as a coup and demanded they be rescinded.
Bashir has refused.
Garang said the crisis opened up the possibility of decisive change in Sudan and urged opposition forces to "remain vigilant".
He said there was a large faction in Sudan's army allied with neither Bashir nor Turabi and might now stage a coup.
"They know that what might not have been possible before December 12 is now possible," Garang said.
The SPLA took up arms in 1983 to fight for the independence of southern Sudan, which is mainly black and Christian or animist, from the Arab, Islamic north.
An estimated 1,5 million people have since been killed in fighting or by war-related famine and disease. - Reuters