Sudan minister expects deal with southern rebels “soon”

CAIRO, Sept 8 (AFP) — Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said Monday that talks underway in Kenya with the southern rebel movement were “headed for a breakthrough” with a peace accord expected to be signed soon.

The talks between Sudan’s Vice President Ali Osman Taha and the head of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, John Garang, “are headed for a breakthrough on the issues in dispute,” Ismail told journalists in Egypt.

“We expect an accord to be signed soon” to end the 20-year civil war, he said.

Ismail is in Cairo to attend Tuesday and Wednesday an Arab foreign ministers’ meeting that will focus on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Iraq. The peace process in Sudan will also be discussed.

The talks between Taha and Garang, which kicked off Thursday, are held in the Kenyan Rift Valley town of Naivasha, 80 kilometres (50 miles) northwest of Nairobi.

They are trying to break a stalemate on how to share power and resources, particularly oil revenues, during a six-year interim period of self-rule for the predominantly Christian and animist southern Sudan.

The two sides reached last year a preliminary accord on transitional self-rule for the south, at the end of which it should decide in a referendum whether it wants to secede or remain united with the Arab and Muslim north.

The war in Sudan is Africa’s oldest armed conflict. It has claimed at least 1.5 million lives, including victims of famine, with at least another four million people displaced.