Sudan, eastern rebels sign power sharing accord

Oct 9, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — The Sudanese government and eastern rebels late Monday inked a power sharing agreement in the Eritrean capital Asmara after months of peace talks, the official SUNA news agency reported.

The two sides, which have already concluded agreements on security issues and on sharing of resources, will sign an overall peace pact at the end of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, around 22 October.

It gave no details of the latest accord.

The head of the Sudanese government delegation to Asmara talks, Mustafa Osman Ismail, said that president Omar al-Bashir and Secretary General of the Arab League Amr Musa would attend the signing of the peace deal in Asmara.

The peace talks have been aimed at ending years of conflict between the government and the Eastern Front rebel group.

In Sudan’s impoverished east, residents have long complained of marginalization by the government in Khartoum.

The Eastern Front was created last year by the region’s largest ethnic group, the Beja, and the Rashidiya Arabs, and has similar aims to its better-known counterparts in Sudan’s western Darfur region: greater autonomy and control of resources.

Its members have waged a low-level insurgency, and Sudan says the push to defuse the eastern crisis is part of efforts to pacify the whole country by building on peace pacts reached recently with other rebels.

Under Eritrean mediation, Khartoum and the Eastern Front signed a ceasefire agreement on June 19 and pledged to work for a comprehensive settlement of their dispute.

Several Libyan-sponsored initiatives have failed to end the sporadic fighting that has plagued Sudan’s eastern states, where the rebels hold a strip of territory along the Eritrean border.

(ST/AFP)