Sudanese opposition alliance close to peace deal with Khartoum

KHARTOUM, May 2 (AFP) — A Sudanese opposition alliance, which grouped outlawed northern political parties with southern rebels during the 1990s, is close to signing a peace deal with Khartoum matching that signed by the rebels in January, a spokesman said Monday.

Sudanese minister Nafei Ali Nafei (L) exchanges the signed peace accord with National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Vice president Abdulrahman Saeed in Cairo, January 16, 2005 .

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which has suffered a string of defections in recent years, is to resume Egyptian-sponsored talks with the government on Saturday in the hope of inking an agreement the following Tuesday, spokesman Ali Ahmed al-Sayyed told AFP.

“It has been provisionally agreed that the negotiations will begin in Cairo on around May 7 (next Saturday) and if everything goes on schedule, the agreement will be signed on May 10,” spokesman Ali Ahmed al-Sayyed told AFP.

The spokesman said that outstanding issues included the fate of the military wings which some northern opposition groups set up in exile in neighbouring Eritrea in the mid-1990s.

The two sides hoped the final round of negotiations would “resolve all outstanding issues between the two sides, including the status of the NDA military forces, through joint committees to be set up during the meeting,” said Sayyed.

Signature of a peace deal would open the way for the NDA and its constituent parties to join a a constitutional convention under way in Khartoum, which is charged with writing a new charter to govern the six-year run-up to a promised referendum on independence for the mainly Christian and animist south.

Sayyed is also a senior official in the Democratic Unionist Party, one of Sudan’s oldest political factions and now the largest group in the NDA.

The rival Umma party of former prime minister Sadeq al-Mahdi distanced itself from the umbrella group in recent years as it strike a separate deal with the government.

Eastern rebels from the Beja minority walked out of the alliance late last year, charging that the main northern parties were sacrificing their interests in the rush to reach a deal.

The umbrella group also includes one of the two ethnic minority rebel groups that have been fighting a devastating civil war with Khartoum for the past two years in the western region of Darfur.

The pro-government Sudanese Media Centre confirmed that a new round of “intensive” talks with the NDA was set to open on either Thursday or Saturday with a view to finalising an agreement by May 10.

It said the initiative followed contacts in recent days between Mirghani and Vice President Ali Osman Taha which had been brokered by John Garang, leader of the southern rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement.