Khartoum to welcome first rebel delegation in two decades of war

By Mohamed Ali Saeed

KHARTOUM, Dec 4 (AFP) — The Sudanese government prepared Thursday to resume high-level peace talks in Kenya with Sudan’s rebel leadership and to receive a rebel delegation here for the first time since the civil war began 20 years ago.

Both sets of talks are due to begin Friday, highlighting the dramatic progress both sides have made toward ending the war in the two years since the United States threw its weight behind the negotiations.

The rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army said it hopes the talks in Khartoum, which have been well publicized here, will not only bolster the peace process but lead to the group’s transformation into a full nationwide party.

Pulling out all the stops, the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) will offer full accommodation and transport to the senior SPLM delegates during their stay in Khartoum.

NCP External Relations Secretary Kamal al-Ibaid said a committee has been assigned to take care of the delegates and arrange meetings with government officials as well as leaders of other parties, including opposition parties.

“The visit is the right beginning for normalising the state of affairs in the stage that follows the signing of the peace agreement,” Ibaid said.

The United States expects a final agreement to end the war to be signed by the end of the year.

The visit is aimed at improving the atmosphere, accelerating the switch to democracy, building confidence and achieving national consensus, SPLA spokesman Yassir Arman said in an interview published here Thursday.

Arman told the independent newspaper Akhbar Al Youm that the delegation also seeks to transform the SPLM into a mass political movement that covers all regions of Sudan.

The visit is also desgined to produce a dialogue with all political forces so that the peace agreement will come with the participation and blessing of all those forces, Arman said.

In a telephone interview with AFP on Wednesday, SPLA leader John Garang said he wants to share power not only with President Omar al-Beshir but with other political leaders once the war ends.

National elections are expected to follow the end of the war, though no date or even year has been set for them.

Only the Khartoum government and SPLA have been directly involved in the peace talks, with northern opposition leaders warning that their exclusion augured badly for peace prospects.

The talks are aimed at ending a war that erupted in 1983 between the SPLA, which has sought to defend the rights of animists and Christians in the south, and successive Arab and Muslim governments in the north.

Northern opposition groups joined the SPLA in 1995 in Eritrea in taking up arms against Beshir, but their unity lasted only a few months.

In Kenya, Garang is scheduled to resume high-level negotiations with Sudanese First Vice President Ali Osman Taha on Friday.

The outstanding issues are finding formulas to share political power, divide up the oil wealth and determine the status of the capital Khartoum, as well as that of three disputed regions.

In Khartoum, SPLA representatives launched a media campaign Wednesday, holding their first press conference here since the war broke out.

Ramadan Mohamed Abdullah, a Khartoum resident who identified himself as SPLM spokesman, said his movement had operated here clandestinely for years, with members risking arrest, but could now go public because of progress toward peace.

He said the delegation would meet Beshir and other NCP officials as well as leaders of the opposition Umma, Democratic Unionist, Popular Congress and other partries in addition to heads of the civil society groups.