Sudanese vice president and rebel leader agree on security arrangements for transitional period
By TOM MALITI Associated Press Writer
NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 24, 2003 (AP) — The Sudanese government and the main southern rebel group fighting a 20-year civil war agreed Wednesday on security arrangements for a six-year transition period, overcoming a major stumbling block at peace talks to end the conflict, rebel and government officials said.
After three weeks of talks, Vice President Ali Osman Mohammed Taha and John Garang, leader of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army, or SPLA, have verbally agreed that the insurgents will retain their own troops in southern Sudan rather than merging their forces into a new national army, the officials said.
“There are details to be worked out; politically, it’s a breakthrough,” said Lazaro Sumbeiywo, former Kenyan army commander and chief mediator at the talks.
The rebels will also withdraw their forces from eastern Sudan, while the government will reduce the number of its forces in southern Sudan – the main area of the conflict.
More than 2 million people have died in the conflict, mainly through war-induced famine and disease, since it erupted in 1983 after southern rebels took up arms against the predominantly Arab and Muslim northern government in a bid to obtain greater autonomy for the largely animist and Christian south.
The rebels and the government will merge their forces in three disputed areas in central Sudan, said Sayed El-Khatib, a Sudanese government spokesman at the talks underway at Naivasha, 100 kilometers (60 miles) northwest of Nairobi. And the rebels will maintain a small troop presence in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, he said.
“They have agreed on the most difficult issue,” said SPLA spokesman Samson Kwaje.
The unprecedented talks between Taha and Garang began Sept. 4, after the latest peace process to end the conflict stalled because of disagreements over key issues like security arrangements and power-sharing.
In July 2002, shortly after the peace talks began, the government and the SPLA reached a deal known as the Machakos Protocol, under which the government accepted the right of southerners to self-determination through a referendum after six years. The rebels in turn accepted the maintenance of Islamic or sharia law in the north. But since then, progress in the peace process had been halting.
The process is being mediated by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, or IGAD, a regional authority, although Taha and Garang are said to be carrying out most of the discussions on a one-to-one basis.
The talks will continue in order to resolve other outstanding issues that have prevented the parties reaching a comprehensive cease-fire agreement.