Slow Sudan peace deals hurt Darfur hopes – Norway
Jan 27,2007 (ADDIS ABABA) – Sudan’s slow implementation of peace deals to end fighting in three regions is hindering talks to create an effective deal in violent Darfur, Norway’s deputy foreign minister has said.
Sudan has signed three peace deals in the past two years — one to end its north-south civil war, one to stop an insurgency in the east and a third in Darfur in May 2006.
That only one of three negotiating Darfur rebel factions signed up to the latter deal was unsurprising, Norway’s Raymond Johansen said, given the lack of effective follow-through with the other peace deals.
“They see that it doesn’t work with the (north-south) agreement, why would it work with Darfur?” he said late on Friday in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. “They see the eastern Sudan peace agreement even not being implemented”.
Norway is a big donor to south Sudan and played a key role in the north-south talks which ended Africa’s longest civil war.
The sole signatory to the May 2006 pact has complained the northern government is not serious about implementing the deal.
Experts estimate 200,000 have been killed and 2.5 million driven from their homes in the four-year Darfur conflict.
Johansen said mediators from the African Union and the United Nations should press Sudan’s government to accept amendments to the Darfur deal to accommodate others.
Washington calls the rape, pillage and murder in Darfur genocide, a term Khartoum rejects and European governments are reluctant to use. The International Criminal Court is investigating alleged war crimes in the region.
Speaking on the sidelines of a meeting of African foreign ministers, Johansen said Sudan’s former north-south foes were not making the expected progress on key issues.
“They have not been able to agree on some of the most important issues like wealth sharing, oil, the military and Abyei.”
Abyei is a disputed central Sudanese region with major oil deposits. Under the north-south January 2005 deal, an autonomous southern government was formed and southerners can vote on secession by 2011.
Relations between the former southern rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the northern National Congress Party (NCP) in recent months have deteriorated.
“There’s some splits internally in the SPLM and also possibly in the NCP which means they are giving their priorities to other things than making unity attractive,” Johansen said.
Most of Sudan’s regional insurgents complain the central government marginalises their areas, not using oil wealth from 330,000 barrels per day to develop infrastructure outside the capital. Sudan is Africa’s largest country.
(Reuters)