Sudan’s Taha rejoins peace talks from Khartoum trip
NAIROBI, March 12 (Reuters) – Sudan’s First Vice President Ali Osman Taha arrived back in Kenya on Friday to rejoin ongoing talks to end a two-decade war with southern rebels after a trip to Khartoum for consultations with President Omar al-Bashir.
Taha, head of the Sudan government delegation, declined to speak to reporters on arrival at the country’s main airport before heading off to the venue of the talks at Naivasha town, some 90 km (54 miles) north west of the capital Nairobi.
A member of Taha’s team said his consultations in Khartoum centred on the disputed oil-rich territory of Abyei, which Sudan suspects the rebels are trying to annex to the south in preparation for eventual secession from the north.
The dispute over Abyei, which is now part of the north, has held up high-level peace talks as Taha consults his government.
The current round of the talks, scheduled to end on Tuesday, is to try to forge an agreement on who rules Abyei and two other contested areas, claimed by both sides, and on how to share power once Africa’s longest-running war comes to an end.
“Our discussions were centred around the two outstanding issues of the three areas and power sharing. We held consultations with the president and the National Congress Party,” government spokesman Said al Khatib told reporters.
Taha is to resume meetings with John Garang, who heads the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). Low-key talks held at committee-level have been going on, officials say.
Khatib said that next Tuesday’s deadline set by the mediators for the conclusion of the current round of talks still stood, but he would not say whether an agreement by the parties on all the outstanding issues would have been reached by then.
Under an agreement reached earlier in the peace talks, the southerners will have the chance to vote in a referendum in six years to determine the future of their region.
A Khartoum official said this week the government was not against a rebel suggestion for a referendum in Abyei on the status of the area, but thought it should be later to let the government use oil revenues to develop the area and win over the people.
Sudan began petroleum exports in the 1990s and now earns about $2 billion a year from its growing oil output of about 250,000 barrels per day.
For 20 years, rebels from the largely animist and Christian south have fought for greater autonomy from the Islamist government in the Arab-speaking north. Disputes over oil, ethnicity and ideology have complicated the conflict.