Sudan peace talks stalled over Sharia laws in capital
By Wangui Kanina
NAIVASHA, Kenya, April 10 (Reuters) – Peace talks to end 21 years of civil war in southern Sudan hit a snag on a dispute over the imposition of Islamic Sharia law in the capital Khartoum, officials said on Saturday.
Mediators in the talks between the government and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) expected a protocol to be signed this weekend to pave the way for the signing of a much-delayed peace deal to end Africa’s longest civil war.
“The issue of the national capital and the laws that govern it are the final obstacle right now,” Sudan’s Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail told Reuters. “In my estimation the current session is in its final stages and the important issue that remains is that of the national capital.”
The six-month-old talks in Kenya between First Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha and rebel leader John Garang stalled in recent weeks over the disputed oil-rich Abyei region, and the issue of power-sharing.
The rebels said the latest obstacle is that the government wants the capital to be under Sharia laws while the SPLA wants non-Muslims to be exempt from the Islamic law.
“The main point that has stalled the talks is the laws to govern Khartoum,” SPLA spokesman Samson Kwaje told reporters. “The government insists that everyone must be subjected to Sharia law. We on the other hand are advocating for…Sharia law for the Muslims and secular laws for the non-Muslims.”
He said the rebels had ideally wanted the capital to be Sharia-free, but had since agreed that both laws be applied.
The southern war began in 1983 and broadly pits the SPLA in the mainly Christian and animist south against the northern Islamic government, complicated by issues of oil and ethnicity.
In an attempt to step up pressure on both sides, acting U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Charles Snyder met Taha and Garang on Wednesday in the Rift Valley town of Naivasha.
Weeks of stagnation in the talks have prompted diplomatic concern that the longer the process dragged out, the greater the possibility for breakdown.
Both the foreign minister and Kwaje said the two parties had significantly narrowed their differences on most of the outstanding issues.
“It is my belief that, if an agreement is reached on the issue of a national capital, then it will be only a matter of days before we reach a final agreement and begin a new stage in our country’s history,” Ismail told Reuters in Nyala, during a three-day visit to Darfur in western Sudan, where a separate conflict has raged for more than a year.
(Additional reporting by Nima Elbagir in Nyala, Sudan).