Kenya and Sudan set to prepare next round of Sudanese peace talks
KHARTOUM, Nov. 04, 2003 (dpa) — The Kenyan Peace Envoy to Sudan, Lazarus Sumbeiywo, is planned to visit Sudan to prepare the next round of peace talks to end the 20-year-old civil war in Sudan.
The Sudanese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mustafa Osman Ismael, confirmed in a statement Tuesday that Sumbeiywo would arrive in Sudan next week and meet with President Omer Hassan al-Bashir, Vice- President Ali Isman Taha and other key political officials.
Sumbeiywo acts as envoy for the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), which has scheduled the next round of peace talks between the Sudanese government and the southern rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) for the end of November.
The negotiations are taking place under the terms of the Machakos Peace Protocol which was brokered in Kenya in July 2002 and set out religious freedom and the right to future independence for the south as well as a framework for power sharing and the distribution of the mainly southern Sudanese oil income.
In October, the SPLA said they hoped the parties would finalize a deal on power sharing in the forthcoming round of talks.
Sumbeiywo, a Kenyan retired army general, in the past succeeded to scale down tensions between the government in the Moslem-controlled North and the SPLA rebels in the more Christian and animist-dominated South.
In his statement, Ismael also praised the commitment of the Kenyan government under President Mwai Kibaki to resolving the conflict in Sudan.
IGAD includes Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Djibouti, Eritrea and Somalia.