Sudan rebel leader hopes to be “soon in Khartoum”

KHARTOUM, May 31 (AFP) — The leader of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army John Garang has told President Omar al-Beshir that he hopes to visit Khartoum “soon”, reports said Monday.

“God willing, we will come soon to your place in Khartoum. We are not against Islam and Arabs. Sudan is for everyone, Muslims and Christians,” Sudanese media quoted Garang as saying in a telephone chat with the president.

Beshir called the rebel leader to congratulate him on the signing of accords last week on the last three outstanding issues in two years of intense peace talks in Kenya aimed at ending Africa’s longest-running civil war.

The deals broadly give the rebels and northern opposition groups substantial presence in an envisaged government of national unity while defining an autonomous status for southern Sudan.

The power-sharing deal between the mainly Christian and aminist southern rebels and the Muslim north leaves only the details of a comprehensive ceasefire and its implementation to be worked out. Final talks are due to begin on June 22.

Beshir told the SPLA leader that he hoped the breakthrough would lead to a comprehensive peace in Sudan and the realisation of the huge country’s development goals.

Garang responded that his movement would “work together, hand in hand, to realise the aspirations of the Sudanese people in the north as well as the south”.

At least 1.5 million people have been killed and more than four million displaced since the SPLA launched its rebellion in 1983.