Sudan, rebels say peace deal would include amnesty

KHARTOUM, Dec 8 (Reuters) – The Sudanese government and rebels said on Monday a general amnesty would be included in a peace deal they are now negotiating in Kenya with the aim of ending 20 years of civil war in the south.

A spokesman for the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) said it would establish reconciliation committees in the south to deal with war crimes committed in the conflict.

More than two million people have died during two decades of civil war, most of them as a result of famine and disease.

“We have…agreed that there will be a general amnesty announced on the signing of the peace agreement for the whole of Sudan,” the SPLA’s Samson Kwaje told Reuters in Khartoum, where a rebel delegation is making its first official visit.

Foreign Ministry Minister of State Nagheib al-Kher, who also said the deal would contain a general amnesty, added that people would not be prosecuted retrospectively.

The civil war in Africa’s largest country broke out in 1983 and broadly pits the mainly animist and Christian south against the Islamist government in the north. Alongside religion, the war has been fuelled by disputes over oil and ethnicity.

Kwaje said the amnesty would be similar to one declared in South Africa in 1994, where those seeking amnesty had to disclose their offences but not in public and a truth commission was formed to establish what happened during apartheid.

“We will create a regional truth and reconciliation committee to deal with war crimes so that we as a people can move on,” Kwaje said.

The deal is expected to give southern states a degree of autonomy from Khartoum.

Kwaje said the amnesty would be part of a “healing process” in Sudan after years of violence and would exempt people from actual judicial proceedings.