Sudan urges southern rebels to aim for peace deal by year-end

NAIROBI, Dec 5 (AFP) — The Sudanese government urged the main southern rebel group to try and sign a final peace deal by the end of the year, on the eve of the last session of high-level talks in Kenya.

“We are hoping this is the last round of talks (and) we hope that we will complete the peace deal,” government chief negotiator Nadie Ali Nadie told journalists, shortly after Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Taha arrived in Nairobi for the negotiations.

Taha and Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) leader John Garang will go into head-to-head negotiations on Monday, a week after low-level delegates started discussing details of a permanent ceasefire and technical security measures in the Kenyan northwestern town of Naivasha.

“We are enthusiastic and we feel that our brothers on the other side (SPLM/A) will be keen to wrap up this whole thing and complete a peace deal,” said Nadie, who is also Sudan’s federal relations minister.

The UN Security Council last month held a special session in Nairobi and extracted a written promise from the Sudan government and SPLM/A rebels to sign the deal ending 21 years of conflict in southern Sudan by December 31.

“We hope to beat the deadline… Issues that are remaining are not difficult,” he added.

More than two years of intense negotiations have already delivered agreements on key issues such as sharing of power and wealth, leaving technical details on the negotiation table, crucial to reaching a final peace deal to halt Africa’s longest and bloodiest conflict.

In other developments, the semi-governmental Sudanese Media Center (SMC) reported that three plane-loads of weapons and ammunition have been delivered to rebels in the troubled Sudanese region of Darfur using relief planes from Eritrea.

The SMC quoted “informed sources” as saying the shipments were flown on planes belonging to unidentified organizations operating in the humanitarian field in Darfur.

It said the flights originated from an airbase in neighbouring Eritrea under the supervision of the army and intelligence commanders with government approval.

Sudan and Eritrea have for years traded accusations of supporting one another’s rebel groups.

Relations reached a new low in October after Eritrea claimed to have uncovered a Sudanese-backed plot to assassinate President Issaiais Afeworki.

Hostilities have flared up again in Darfur in recent weeks, with the government and rebels both refusing to take responsibility for violations of a ceasefire that was signed in April 2004.

A top official in Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region accused rebels of attacking villages and raping women in what he said was a new violation of a fragile ceasefire, a newspaper reported Sunday.

“Rebels assaulted, tortured and raped a group of women” in the town of Koma, north of el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, the state’s governor Osman Yusuf Kibir was quoted by independent Akhbar Al Youm as saying.

Kibir said another group from the rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) also Saturday raided the village of Um Jer Abdu in the eastern part of North Darfur, stealing property owned by local residents including a car.

He said the attacks were “a flagrant violation and disrespect by the rebel movements for the ceasefire and other agreements”.

Hostilities have flared in Darfur in recent weeks, with the government and rebels both refusing to take responsibility for violations of a ceasefire that was signed in April 2004.

Kibir’s claims come shortly after the publication of a UN report which said government-backed militia in Darfur are raping women refugees with impunity.

The Darfur conflict erupted in February 2003, when rebels rose up to demand an end to the marginalisation of their region by Khartoum as well as a bigger share of Sudan’s riches.

Khartoum, aided by a proxy Arab militia, the Janjaweed, cracked down on the rebels and their perceived supporters, creating what the UN has described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

More than 70,000 people have been killed or have died from hunger and disease in the area, according to the UN, and another 1.5 million have been displaced.