Sudanese rebels propose new integrated force for transition

NAIVASHA, Kenya, Sept 14 (AFP) — The Sudanese government and southern rebels were on Sunday exploring for the first time the possibility of establishing one integrated force to operate during a transition period to end the country’s 20-year civil war, officials said.

The proposals made in the peace talks here from the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) would, if accepted, result in the creation of an integrated force of 3,000 troops from both sides, officials said.

“The south is insisting on the formation of an integrated force, as a nucleus for a national army, should a peace deal be reached and Sudan remained united” after the six-year transition, said an official in the negotiations, who requested anonymity.

The SPLA has also proposed that Khartoum keep its current army in the north, while those of the SPLA will remain in the south during the transition period.

“Only the retrained integrated force will be allowed to operate both in the north and south,” the official explained.

“The integrated force would then be trained on new common ideologies before they are deployed in Khartoum in the north and Juba in the south,” said the official, who requested anonymity.

Khartoum has yet to reply to the proposals, but other negotiation sources said the government delegation was still mulling over them.

Khartoum, which has between 80,000 and 100,000 troops stationed in the south, is believed to be reluctant to withdraw the force.

Sudan Vice President Ali Osman Taha and rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) chief John Garang entered the 11th day of their peace talks at this Kenyan Rift Valley town on Sunday, aimed at ending Africa’s longest civil war, but were still bogged down by the issue of security arrangements.

Negotiations on the security arrangements have been an obstacle in the current round of talks, with the SPLA refusing to discuss power- and wealth-sharing and the three disputed regions of Southern Kordofan, Southern Blue Nile and Abyei.

The rebels see security arrangements as the only guarantee to the implementation of a peace agreement reached between the two sides.

“The absence of security arrangements was responsible for the collapse of an earlier agreement signed in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa in 1972 to end an earlier war between Khartoum and the southern rebels,” an official said.

“The church-mediated agreement in Addis Ababa only ensured a ceasefire, but failed to address how the agreement could have been implemented, although the rebels had been absorbed into the Sudan army,” he added.

That agreement collapsed in the early 1980s, when General Gaafar Numeiri seized power in Khartoum and abrogated most of the terms of the deal, prompting Garang, then an Sudanese army officer, to take up arms against Khartoum in 1983.

Since then, the war, which has pitted the mainly Christian and animist south against the Muslim, Arabised north, has killed more than 1.5 million people and displaced more than four million others.