Little chance of Sudan foes reaching final peace deal this year

NAIVASHA, Kenya, Dec 21 (AFP) — Sudan’s government and main southern rebel group are unlikely to make good a repeated pledge to sign a comprehensive deal to end 20 years of civil war by the end of the month, Kenyan and mediation officials told AFP.

“The comprehensive peace accord… will be signed next month,” Kenyan Foreign Minister Kalonzo Musyoka told AFP by telephone on Sunday.

He declined to say exactly when in January this might happen.

A protocol on wealth-sharing between Khartoum and the the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLM/A) was expected to be signed on Sunday, but the need to fine-tune the document delayed the signing ceremony until early next week.

The sharing of wealth, particularly oil revenues, is one of the key points of the current round of talks.

When US Secretary of State Colin Powell visited negotiating delegates from the government and the SPLM/A in the Kenyan town of Naivasha in October, he extracted a pledge from Vice President Osman Ali Taha and SPLA/M leader John Garang to clinch a final peace deal by the end of 2003.

Both sides have stood by this deadline on several occasions since then.

But when asked Sunday if it was still feasible, Nick Hayson, a South African acadamic advising the mediating Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, gave an unequivocal “no.”

“They were hoping to finish by December but now its not possible,” he told AFP.

As well as wealth-sharing — which principally deals with revenue from Sudan’s 300,000 daily barrels of oil — this supposedly final round of talks is also meant to clinch issues about power-sharing and the status of three disputed geographical areas.

Representatives of the two warring sides — whose conflict has claimed some 1.5 million lives since 1983 — were a shade less pessimistic.

“We still have time, but another committee is now discussing the three areas,” SPLA/M spokesman Yassir Arman told AFP.

Asked if this issue could be resolved at the same time as wealth-sharing, on which a protocol is due be signed Tuesday, the spokesman simply said: “maybe.”

Government delegate Ahmed Diedry, who is also the number two in Sudan’s embassy in Nairobi, declined to be drawn at all:

“That one is yet to be determined,” he said.

Previous rounds, also in Kenya, have yielded success, first in 2002 when the foes agreed that, after six years of self-rule the south will hold a referendum on whether to join the north, and under what arrangement, or secede.

In September, Garang and Taha cliched an deal on transitional security arrangements.