Sudan’s defence minister in Kenya to boost govt side in peace talks

NAIVASHA, Kenya, Sept 10 (AFP) – Sudan’s Defence Minister Major General Bakri Hassan Saleh arrived here Wednesday to beef up a government delegation holding talks with southern rebels to end the country’s 20 years of civil war, officials said.

“The defence minister and other senior military officers came to reinforce the government delegation as they discuss security arrangements,” an official in the mediation team told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Sudan’s Vice President Ali Osman Taha and John Garang, the leader of the southern-based rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), have been meeting in Naivasha, 80 kilometres (50 miles) northwest of Nairobi, since Thursday.

One of the key issues being discussed is “security arrangements” during an already agreed six-year interim period of self-rule for southern Sudan, which will be effected when a comprehensive peace accord is signed.

Taha and Garang have also been negotiating how to share power and resources, particularly oil revenues, during the interim period of self-rule for the south provided for in an accord signed in July 2002.

One thorny issue with regard to the security arrangements is Khartoum’s opposition to a clause in a draft deal drawn up by mediators of the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) providing for a separate army for the south, under Garang’s leadership, during the interim period.

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, despite the areas not being geographically in the south.

Asked how long the talks between Taha and Garang would last, an official in the SPLA delegation said: “We have a long way to go.”

The 20-year-old conflict between the Muslim-dominated regime in Khartoum and the mainly Christian or animist SPLA, Africa’s longest-running civil war, is estimated to have killed at least 1.5 million people and displaced another four million.