Sudanese parties draw up agenda for Asmara peace talks

June 14, 2006 (ASMARA) — Talks to restore stability in Sudan’s troubled eastern region resumed in the Eritrean capital Wednesday with government and rebel negotiators working on the agenda for the peace process, officials said.

The Sudanese delegation, headed by presidential adviser Mustafa Osman Ismail, and the Eastern Front rebels led by Musa Mohamed Ahmed took their negotiating teams into a closed session to draw up an agenda for the peace process, aimed at finding stability for Africa’s largest nation after nearly non-stop conflict since its independence in 1956.

“This week the two parties will try to define a framework, a declaration of principle for the negotiations,” according to an official with the rebel group.

In Nairobi, Sudan’s State Minister for Foreign Affairs Mohamed El-Samani El-Wasila said the talks were likely to focus on formulas for sharing political and military power with the insurgents, who have complained of marginalisation.

“The talks will mainly concentrate on power-sharing and on security arrangement for the fighting groups, that is to say the integration of the fighting groups into the national army and police,” El-Wasila told reporters in Nairobi.

The Eastern Front, formed last year, controls an area on the Sudanese-Eritrean border around the town of Hamesh Koreb and has been involved in low-intensity guerrilla activity against the Khartoum government for years.

The Khartoum government says the latest push to defuse the crisis in the east is part of an attempt to pacify the whole of Sudan by building on peace agreements reached recently with other rebels.

A peace accord was signed in January 2005 to end a 21-year-old north-south civil war, and efforts are still under way to stabilise the western region of Darfur after rebels there signed a deal with Khartoum last month.

(ST)