Sudan VP, rebel leader working on proposals to unblock peace deadlock

NAIVASHA, Kenya, Sept 9 (AFP) — Sudanese Vice President Osman Ali Taha and rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) leader John Garang were for the sixth day running trying to resolve “key contentious issues” blamed for blocking a peace pact to end Africa’s longest civil war.

“Delegates from the government side and the SPLA are currently working on proposals that could resolve the key contentious issues that have delayed the peace process,” a source close to the talks in this Kenyan Rift Valley town, 80 kilometres (50 miles) northwest of Nairobi, told AFP.

“Progress is good,” the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) chief mediator, retired Kenyan General Lazaro Sumbeiywo, told AFP on the sidelines of the negotiations.

Taha and Garang have been trying since last Thursday to break a stalemate on how to share power and resources, particularly oil revenues, during a six-year interim period of self-rule for southern Sudan provided for in an accord signed in July 2002.

That accord will only be implemented when a comprehensive peace agreement has been signed.

Another stumbling block has been the government’s opposition to a clause in a draft deal drawn up by IGAD mediators providing for a separate army for the south, under Garang’s leadership, during the period of southern self-rule.

Khartoum has argued that the clause paves the way for the south’s immediate secession.

Both sides are also wrangling over three disputed areas — the Southern Blue Nile State, Abyei, and the Nuba Mountains in the centre of the country — where the SPLA is active even thought they are not geographically in the south.

The two sides last year reached 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 civil war, which erupted in 1983, is Africa’s oldest armed conflict, which has claimed at least 1.5 million lives, including victims of famine, with at least another four million people displaced.