Hopes for Sudan peace grow as rebels make historic peace visit to Khartoum

KHARTOUM, Dec 5 (AFP) — Hopes grew for peace and reconciliation here after the government buried years of animosity with a key northern opposition leader and greeted the first southern rebel delegation to Khartoum in 20 years of civil war.

Thousands of smiling people, many of them southerners living here, swarmed into the airport to welcome a senior delegation of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) on a flight from Libya, an AFP correspondent said.

“Welcome new Sudan,” they cheered in English.

The arrival of the delegates, who flew in to bolster peace talks with the Sudanese government, underscored quickening moves to end the civil war.

Khartoum, set to resume high-level peace talks with the SPLA in Kenya later Friday, was basking in the glow of an accord signed in Saudi Arabia with the umbrella National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

The agreement with the NDA, which includes the SPLA and northern opposition groups, was signed Thursday night in Jeddah.

Among the SPLA delegates arriving here were Abdel Aziz Helou, spokesman Yasser Arman, and Bagan Amoum, who is also secretary general of the NDA.

They were greeted at the airport by Mubarak al-Fadel Mehdi, advisor to Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir, as well as two northern opposition parties.

They are expected to meet Beshir as well as the ruling National Congress Party and opposition parties.

Thursday’s accord, signed by Sudanese First Vice President Ali Osman Taha and NDA leader Mohammed Osman Mirghani, supports existing peace negotiations with the SPLA and calls for a new democratic Sudan benefiting all political parties.

The official Al-Anbaa daily welcomed the deal as “an important historic step for ending the suffering of the Sudanese people,” one that promoted dialogue over war as a solution to the nation’s divisions.

The state-run Omdurman Radio quoted Taha as saying the peace process “is spacious enough to include everyone.”

The transitional period that follows the signing of a peace agreement “will be devoted to unifying Sudanese ranks,” he said.

Mirghani had complained that northern opposition parties, some of whom joined the southern rebels in armed conflict with the Khartoum government, were excluded from direct negotiations in Kenya between the SPLA and Khartoum.

Mirghani was quoted as saying this is a “great day on which the nation is unified around the peace issue.”

“All NDA factions, including the SPLA, have mandated me to sign the agreement,” he said.

“The road for returning home has now been paved,” Mirghani said when asked whether or not he would return to Sudan after about 14 years of self-imposed exile spent in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Eritrea.

According to a copy of the agreement obtained by AFP, the two sides said the deal “emanates from our conviction that war does not resolve existing differences, and our will to reach a comprehensive political settlement and to achieve a national consensus to consolidate the peace process.”

The text said they support the peace process in Kenya and the “points of agreement that stipulate the unity of Sudan, the right to self-determination and the relationship between religion and state.”

Since 1983, Sudan’s civil war has pitted the SPLA, representing mainly animists and Christians in the south, against successive Arab and Muslim governments in Khartoum, to the north.

“Citizenship is the basis of rights and duties without discrimination between the citizens on the religious, ethnic or political basis,” the text said.

It said the “the regime in Sudan must be democratic, multiparty, and presidential, and guaranteeing the peaceful change of power through free elections.”

Both sides agreed on the right of each of the nation’s states to elect its governor and its legislative council.”