The Hindu : International : Peace in sight for Sudan

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, May 27, 2004

International

International

Peace in sight for Sudan

NAIROBI, MAY 26. The Sudanese Government and rebels in the south have resolved obstacles in their peace talks and are expected to sign an accord today paving the way for an end to 21 years of civil war which has claimed 2 million lives.

Negotiators for the Government and the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) will sign protocols at a ceremony which should settle the dispute, mediators said yesterday.

Kenya hosted the talks at Naivasha, a town outside Nairobi, and hailed the agreement as a breakthrough which would allow both sides to lay down their weapons.

``The signing of the protocols represents a major step towards the achievement of a final comprehensive political settlement to the conflict,'' said the Kenyan Government.

In response, the Arab League pledged $2 billions to rebuild southern Sudan.

But the accord does not cover a separate conflict in Sudan's western Darfur region where hundreds of thousands have been displaced in what some aid agencies call the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

Nor does it guarantee an end to fighting between the Government-held north and SPLA-held south.

``We are very pleased that the next stage of the peace process has been reached. We will be even more pleased when the comprehensive ceasefire has been signed,'' said Susan Linnee of the think tank the International Crisis Group.

Both sides had already agreed to share wealth and power during a six-year transition period leading to a referendum on independence for the south.

But that deal snagged on administrative arrangements, the status of buffer regions and whether Khartoum, the capital, should be governed under Islamic law.

It was not immediately clear how those issues were resolved but Kenya's optimism that they were indeed resolved seemed to be shared by Sudan's Foreign Minister, Mustafa Osman Ismail, who told reporters in Ethiopia that a deal would be signed today.

The war, which flared up in 1983, pitting the mainly Muslim and Arab north against the mainly Christian and animist south, was waged across deserts and scrub and killed an estimated 2 million people, mostly civilians who succumbed to hunger and disease.

The stakes rose in the 1990s with the tapping of oil which now yields $2 billions in revenue per year but pressure from the United States and other outsiders prodded the combatants into talks in 2002.

The SPLA agreed to put its demands for secession on hold and the National Islamic Front Government agreed to partly separate state and religion and withdraw most of its troops from the south.

However, talks then stalled over whether Khartoum should be a secular capital or subject to sharia law.

Guardian Newspaers Limited 2004

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