Hopes rise for deal to end Africa’s longest civil war
By William Wallis in Nairobi and James Drummond in Cairo, Financial Times
Oct 07, 2003 — Sudan’s peace talks reopened yesterday in Naivasha, Kenya, amid fresh optimism that an agreement to end Africa’s longest civil war could be reached by the year’s end.
John Garang, head of the Southern People’s Liberation Movement, and Ali Othman Taha, vice-president in the Khartoum government, have expressed confidence in recent days that a scheduled last round of negotiations can bring a final settlement.
Mr Othman Taha, an Islamist hardliner in the regime of President Omar al-Bashir, said in Cairo last week during a tour of Arab capitals that he hoped an agreement would be possible “in a few weeks”.
Twenty years of fighting between the government in Khartoum and rebels in the south has cost up to 1.5m lives and dislocated millions.
After a period of stalemate, US-backed peace talks regained momentum last month, when Mr Othman Taha and Mr Garang reached a compromise on one of the most contentious issues: security arrangements during a planned six-year power-sharing, transition period.
But observers remain concerned that the main drive for peace is coming from a US administration in need of a foreign policy success story.
Sudan is listed as a state sponsor of terror by Washington but at the weekend, Carl Fulford, a retired US general, arrived in Khartoum at the head of a team to study how to monitor the new security arrangements.
There is also concern that the exclusion from the talks of other disaffected groups within Sudan, Africa’s largest country, could undermine what is achieved in Naivasha between Mr Garang’s SPLM and the Khartoum government.
Under the terms of an initial deal reached last year at Machakos, another Kenyan town, inhabitants of the largely Christian and animist south would vote at the end of a six-year period on whether to remain within a united Sudan or secede from the Arab-influenced and mostly Muslim north.
The latest agreement went further as the Khartoum government agreed to withdraw all but 12,000 of its troops from the south. The SPLM will maintain a separate army while contributing towards a new national force.
Several potential stumbling blocks remain. The division of power and wealth, notably Sudan’s oil reserves, and the religious status of the capital, Khartoum, are still unresolved.
General Lazaro Sumbeiywo, the Kenyan mediator at the talks, said these issues would be studied at committee level over the next week, paving the way for another meeting between Mr Garang and Mr Othman Taha.