Sudanese agree on wealth at peace talks-Kenya

By Wangui Kanina

NAIVASHA, Kenya, Dec 23 (Reuters) – Sudan’s government and rebel foes have agreed in principle on how to share wealth when their civil war ends, Kenyan Foreign Minister Kalonzo Musyoka said on Tuesday, marking a key advance at peace talks.

An accord would dismantle a big hurdle to ending Africa’s longest conflict in the continent’s biggest country — a 20-year-old civil war that has cost two million lives and uprooted four million people.

However Musyoka told Reuters the parties, meeting in the Kenyan Rift Valley town of Naivasha, were unlikely to sign a separate accord on wealth and would instead work on through Christmas to clinch a more inclusive peace pact.

“The two leaders have agreed on wealth sharing… It’s an agreement in principle,” he said, referring to rebel leader John Garang and the government’s first vice president Osman Ali Taha.

“The two parties have decided not to sign piecemeal agreements. They will work through Christmas and sign (a more inclusive) agreement by the end of this year.”

War broke out in Sudan in 1983, pitting the Islamic government in the Arab-speaking north against rebels seeking more autonomy for the largely animist or Christian south. Oil, ideology, ethnicity and religion have complicated it.

The government and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) agreed last year to a waiver on Islamic law in non-Muslim areas and a six-year transitional period from January 2004 after which the south would vote on whether to secede.

Garang and Taha met in the afternoon to review developments but it was not immediately clear if they had examined the wording of a draft agreement on sharing the wealth of the oil-exporting country. Delegates had earlier said the two men would check the text to see if it met their final approval.

EQUAL SHARE

The men agreed in principle at the weekend on taking an equal share of oil revenues, but Musyoka’s announcement suggested they had also reached preliminary agreement on sharing taxes, the central bank’s role and questions about the currency.

The oil deal was a major concession by the government, which had wanted only five percent of oil revenues to go the SPLA. Sudan’s main oil fields are in the south, where the SPLA is based. Sudan exports 300,000 barrels of oil per day.

“It’s a positive development,” said the International Crisis Group’s David Mozersky of the accord on oil revenues. “The two leaders are ready to do this (clinch an overall wealth accord). They really want to walk away with something.”

Washington pledged in October to boost aid to Sudan to rebuild the sparsely populated country of 30 million but warned that assistance hinged on the implementation of a peace deal.

Wealth is only one of three outstanding topics — the others are power sharing in the interim period and the status of Abyei, Nuba Mountains and Southern Blue Nile. These three areas are part of northern Sudan, but the SPLA says they are marginalised, like the rest of the south, and have demanded self-rule for them and a waiver on Islamic law.

Despite the progress in the talks, the Sudanese government is still fighting two other rebel groups that launched an uprising in the western Darfur area in February.

The rebels, who accuse the authorities of marginalising the arid region, said on Tuesday government-armed militias and warplanes had killed at least 24 people over the past four days.