Crisis in Sudan’s Darfur should be over by end of year: V. pres.

KHARTOUM, Oct 17, 2004 (KUNA) — Vice-president Ali Osman Taha said on Sunday that the crisis in Darfur should come to a conclusion by the year’s end.

Taha, giving a report on his latest peace talks with South Sudanese rebel leader John Garang to the cabinet, said that his meeting with Garang should dispel any notions that the Sudanese government is not serious in its penchant for concluding a peace treaty with all rebels in the country.

Taha yesterday finished the fifth round of talks with Garang, both having agreed to deal with the armed presence of Garang’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) forces in East Sudan.

The Sudanese government and the SPLM have been in perpetual negotiation for more than 20 years to end the civil war in the country whose casualties have numbered two millions in addition to four million displaced people.