Sudan’s north-south peace deal a model for Darfur: officials
BRUSSELS, Jan 25 (AFP) — Sudan’s government and main rebel group said Tuesday that a peace accord clinched to end two decades of civil war should inspire an end to the bloody conflict in Darfur.
“We hope this will also help us in resolving other conflicts in the country, especially that of Darfur,” First Vice President Ali Osman Taha said after the signature of an accord with the European Union to resume EU-Sudanese ties.
Nhial Deng Nhi, commissioner for external relations of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), said elements of his group’s peace deal with Khartoum “could be successfully applied to resolving the problem in Darfur”.
The legislative body of the SPLM on Monday unanimously ratified the January 9 peace deal signed between the Muslim-dominated government and the southern rebel group to end 21 years of war.
Some 1.5 million people died and another four million fled their homes during the civil war in mainly Christian south Sudan, Africa’s longest conflict since the end of a 27-year war in Angola in 2002.
International concern about Sudan has now focussed on the western region of Darfur, where about 70,000 people are estimated to have been killed and 1.5 million others made homeless in attacks by government-backed militias.
An uprising begun by ethnic minority rebels in early 2003 prompted the government to launch a bloody crackdown by the Arab militias which Washington has said amounts to genocide.
Under the deal with the SPLM, the government and rebels have agreed to come together in a government of national reconciliation, to decentralise power from Khartoum and to increase the powers of local administration.
“The peace agreement has provided clearly for a number of concepts and principles that govern the issue of power-sharing and wealth-sharing, not only between north and south but for the whole of the country,” Taha said.
“We are committed to using the same drive and our experience in resolving the conflict in south Sudan to bring a prompt and fair answer to the conflict in Darfur,” he said.
Deng added: “The SPLM, as one of the key political players of the Sudanese landscape, will be lending its efforts and weight as part of the broad-based government of national unity to efforts to find a solution in Darfur.”