Sudanese rebel leader backs UN plan to return refugees

NAIROBI, Nov. 12, 2003 (dpa) — Sudanese rebel leaders agreed to support the U.N.s plan to repatriate more than half a million refugees in the southern half of the country, a U.N. spokesman said Wednesday.

Rebel chief John Garang promised U.N. High Commissioner Ruud Lubbers to back the U.N.s effort to rebuild the countrys infrastructure, demolished after more than two decades of civil war.

As soon you reach peace, you will have the new challenges of reconstruction,” Lubbers said after the meeting with Garang in Matinga, a town in rebel-held southern Sudan near the Kenyan border.

After nearly three years of thorny negotiations, there is hope that a peace deal will be signed next month to end Africas longest-running conflict.

UNHCR plans to build schools, hospitals and feeding centres to help Sudan with the massive influx of returning refugees expected in the next few years.

Most of the refugees are in neighbouring countries, mainly Uganda, Ethiopia and Kenya.

More than two million people have died in the war between the Islamic government and rebels in the Christian and animist south, a region rich in natural resources.