Sudan to sign eastern peace in Asmara

Oct 14, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Eastern rebels and the government of Sudan are to sign a peace deal on Saturday to end a decade of low-level revolt in the resource-rich east of Africa’s largest country.

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and high-level officials are to travel to neighbouring Eritrea, which mediated the deal. The agreement is the third peace deal Khartoum has negotiated in less then two years.

“Eastern Sudan is the most marginalised area in Sudan and by signing this agreement there is admission and recognition of this fact,” said Yasir Arman of the former southern rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), which concluded a north-south peace deal with the government in January 2005.

Sudan’s east hosts its largest gold mine, diamond resources and its only port, Port Sudan, where its main oil pipelines feed exports to the outside world. But it is one of the poorest regions of the country.

The eastern rebels, calling themselves the Eastern Front, are comprised of the non-Arab Beja and the pure Arab Rashaidiya tribes. Like rebels in Darfur and former rebels in the south, they complained Khartoum exploited their natural resources without developing the region.

During about a decade of low-scale conflict, eastern rebels allied themselves with former southern rebels and those from Darfur.

But after some insurgents elsewhere in the country signed peace deals to join the central government, the eastern rebels found themselves in a weaker negotiating position.

This year, they also lost control of the Hamesh Koreb area on the Eritrean border where, along with southern rebels, they had based their forces. Under a 2005 north-south deal, the northern army took over the area earlier this year and U.N. peacekeepers later withdrew.

The SPLM’s coalition government formed last year paved the way for talks with the east after numerous false starts.

Details of the eastern peace agreement are as yet unclear, though Arman said he expected the state of emergency in place in the east since 1999 to be lifted.

Whatever the agreement amounts to, Arman said the actions that follow will determine its success.

“What is more important is the implementation of the agreement not just signing it,” he said.

Implementation of the north-south deal has been slow. And the peace accord signed in May for Darfur in Sudan’s west has so far failed to end the fighting.

The deal will likely strengthen Eritrean-Sudanese relations, which have been strained for many years. Asmara has hosted both southern and Darfur rebels and Sudanese opposition politicians.

Sudan also accused Asmara of arming and training the Sudanese rebels, a charge Eritrea denies.

(Reuters)