Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister, Lloyd Axworthy, actually met with Talisman's CEO earlier this year to ask the company to assist in the peace process. It won't be long before corporations sit at the table of peace negotiations in order to ensure their interests. Lual said the northern-based National Islamic Front government plans to sustain a campaign of starvation, torture, slavery and killing against Christian and animist southern Sudanese by using revenue from drilling operations and an oil pipeline from the south partly financed and created by Talisman.
Development gives the option of moving forward.
Talisman is one of Canada's most internationaloil producers, with operations in Africa, the Far East and in the North Sea. The presence of Talisman is beneficial in that it brings a western involvement into the affairs of the state. Southern Sudan, Buckee said, is a turbulent welter of 300 tribes, with some of the biggest at each other's throats, and three million of five million southern refugees have fled to the north. We hope that a public outcry against this policy will force Talisman to reconsider their involvement with this despotic regime and sever their relationship with the project. Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy urged Canadian companies in March to uphold codes of conduct in doing business with Sudan's government.