Sudan faction leader breaks off peace accord with government

KHARTOUM, Oct 25 (AFP) — The leader of a southern rebel faction announced Saturday that he was tearing up a six-year-old peace agreement with the Sudanese government and rejoining his fighters in the bush.

Lam Akol, who heads a mainly Shilluk breakaway faction of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), accused the government of breaking the terms of the accord they struck in the town of Fashoda in 1997 by denying him permission to visit his fighters in areas of Upper Nile province they control.

By preventing me from visiting my forces, the government “has hammered the last nail in the coffin of the Fashoda agreement,” Akol said in a statement carried by most Khartoum dailies.

“I no longer have a place in this part of the country (northern Sudan),” said the longtime defector to the government cause, who served as transport minister until resigning from the ruling National Congress last year.

“The government has to bear the political and moral responsibility of what happened,” he said.

Akol’s break with the government came as it was engaged in intensive talks in Kenya on a peace accord with the mainstream SPLA faction of John Garang to end the 20-year civil war in the south.

During a visit to the talks venue Wednesday, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said he hoped to see a definitive agreement by December on the basis of a draft deal signed last year which forsees a referendum on independence for the mainly Christian and animist south after six years of autonomy.

Akol broke with the Dinka SPLA leader in the early 1990s together with Nuer politician Riek Machar.