Sudan foes reach moment of truth in peace talks
NAIVASHA, Kenya, Sept 16 (AFP) — High-level talks aimed at clinching an end to Sudan’s devastating civil war continued Tuesday in Kenya, where a leading analyst said the process had reached a “moment of truth.”
Sudanese First Vice President Ali Osman Taha and John Garang, head of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) have been trying to hammer out the details of how government troops and rebel forces will be deployed once a final accord is signed.
“We have arrived at a moment of truth in the Sudan peace process,” John Prendergast, the co-director of the International Crisis Group’s Africa programme, told a news conference in Nairobi.
Prendergast described the current Taha-Garang negotiations as “the most important meeting held in 20 years of war”.
The subject of these particular talks are security arrangements during and after a six-year period of autonomy for rebel-held southern Sudan agreed upon in July 2001.
In Khartoum, the ruling National Congress Party said the negotiations were making “remarkable progress”.
Judging from incoming reports, the negotiations “have not yet reached agreement but have made remarkable progress”, the party’s secretary general, Ibrahim Ahmed Omar, told journalists.
“The leadership bureau harbours high hopes that the negotiators will resolve the security arrangements issue,” said Omar, adding that if this issue was resolved, the other issues would “not take time”.
Sudan’s Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail meanwhile said in Senegal that he hoped a peace deal would be signed “within two days”, and called on his hosts to back efforts to cancel Sudan’s debt.
But a source close to the negotiations in Kenya said the talks were still bogged down over a number of issues, despite the intense efforts of the past two weeks.
Taha and Garang are yet to agree on whether or not SPLA forces will be fully absorbed into the army, how many government troops remain in the south during the interim period, and how, if at all, troops from both sides might join forces in new, integrated military units.
“If you unlock this, you unlock the whole peace deal,” said Prendergast.
“The peace process in Sudan is delicately poised between success and failure,” he said, suggesting that if a deal was not reached on security arrangements, a return to full-scale war seemed likely.
Sudan’s north-south civil war dates back to the 19th century and beyond. Its latest phase began when the SPLA took up arms in 1983. Since then, more than 1.5 million people have been killed and four million displaced.
The conflict takes place against a background of domination of the mainly black African, animist or Christian south by the Arab, Islamic north, but has become increasingly driven by a fight for control of natural resources, notably oil.