Sudan and rebels agree division of oil revenue
NAIROBI, Dec 21, 2003 (dpa) — The Sudanese government and the country’s main rebel group have agreed in principle to share oil revenues, the Kenyan mediator of the on-going Sudanese peace talks said Sunday.
However, the government and the southern-based Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) are still working out the exact percentages of the oil revenues that would go to the north and to the south, retired general Lazaro Sumbeiywo told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
The division of oil revenues is one of several sticking points in the current wealth-sharing discussions being held in the Kenyan lakeside town of Naivasha. Another controversial aspect of wealth- sharing is whether or not the south will set up its own banking system with its own currency.
The two sides were expected to reach an agreement on wealth sharing Sunday. However, Sumbeiywo said he did not “want to speculate” on whether or not they would sign the agreement on that day. “We’re still waiting for an agreement,” he said.
Unequal distribution of wealth between north and south Sudan has been one of the factors fuelling the country’s civil war, which has been raging since 1983 and which has claimed an estimated two million people.
The conflict ostensibly pits the largely Christian, African south against the Islamic, Arab north, but analysts have said the war is as much about a struggle for resources and power between the SPLM/A and the Khartoum government based in the north as it is about religion and culture.
People living in the oil-rich south do not have an equal share in the country’s vast oil revenues, the SPLM/A has said. Scores of national and international human rights investigations have accused the government of bombing and violently displacing southerners from oil-rich areas.
Sudan produced an average of more than 200,000 barrels of oil a day last year and is now producing up to 300,000 barrels a day. Oil revenues account for about 70 percent of Sudan’s total export earnings, according to U.S. government statistics.
After the two sides agree on wealth sharing, they still need to work out how to share power and the administration of three disputed areas in central Sudan; the Nuba Mountains, Southern Blue Nile, and Abyei that technically belong to the north but, according to the SPLM/A, should belong under the jurisdiction of the south.
The two sides are expected to sign an overall peace deal early in the new year.
Peace talks between the government and SPLM/A began in Kenya last year. Early into the talks they signed an historic agreement that confines Islamic law to the north and gives southerners a chance to vote in a referendum, six years hence, on whether or not to secede from the north.