US wants final Sudan peace deal by month-end: Danforth
NAIVASHA, Kenya, March 19 (AFP) — US President George W. Bush’s special envoy to Sudan, John Danforth, urged Khartoum and southern rebels to reach a comprehensive peace agreement by the end of this month, saying further delay might result in a waning of international support for the process.
“What I have said to the parties is that we can wrap up this (peace talks) by the end of the month,” Danforth told a news conference in the Kenyan town of Naivasha, the venue of the peace talks between Khartoum’s delegation lead by Vice Preside Ali Osman Taha and that of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) headed by John Garang.
The talks are deadlocked over the disputed region of Abyei, an oil-rich area of central Sudan with a complex political history.
“When I was here two months ago, the parties said to me that ‘we have already discussed all the remaining issues’. They have talked about these issues, they understand all the issues, the time has come for decisions,” said Danforth.
Khartoum and the SPLA, who have been at war since 1983, failed to meet a December 31 deadline to forge the comprehensive deal.
Danforth said that Bush had expressed concern “about the delay in the talks and the difficulties the parties were having in resolving the remaining issues particularly the status of the contested area of Abyei.
“We have got two months of disappointment, President Bush has instructed me to express his concern that the longer this process drags on, chances are that war will break out,” said Danforth.
Bush is required to make a report on the progress on the Sudanese peace process to Congress on April 20, said Danforth.
Asked if the US was imposing a new deadline on the two parties, Danforth said: “It is hardly up to the US to give deadlines to anybody. But I can only say in our country the Sudan Peace Act creates deadlines when the president has to make a report to Congress”.
“On Monday President Bush raised the same issue he raised with me two years ago when he appointed me special envoy. At that time he said ‘I want you to go the region to determine if it is worthwhile for us to engage in a very intensive fashion in the peace process.
“I suppose that eventually, sooner or later, a time will come when the US and various countries intensively engaged in Sudan will wonder if there were not a better way to spend their time,” Danforth added.
Sudan’s civil war erupted in 1983 between the south, where most observe traditional African religions and Christianity, and the Muslim, Arabised north. The conflict along with war-related famine and disease has claimed at least 1.5 million lives, mostly in the south.