Sudan foes report substantial progress at talks
By Wangui Kanina
NAIVASHA, Kenya, Dec 24 (Reuters) – Sudanese foes trying to end a civil war reported substantial progress on Wednesday in forging a key agreement on wealth sharing and said they had expanded their peace talks to cover three contested regions.
A joint statement by the government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) said their negotiations in Kenya on trying to end their 20-year-old conflict would be suspended for Christmas Day and would resume on Friday.
A final accord on wealth sharing would dismantle a big obstacle to ending Africa’s longest conflict in the continent’s biggest country — a war that has cost two million lives and uprooted four million people.
“Substantial progress has been achieved on the outstanding issues of wealth sharing including the division of oil revenues produced in the south,” the statement said.
“The parties are now working on the remaining issues to finalise a deal on wealth sharing…The negotiations continue simultaneously on the three areas.”
Negotiators said they hoped to sign a protocol on wealth sharing on Friday or Saturday.
Delegates earlier said SPLA leader John Garang and the government’s first vice president Osman Ali Taha met twice on Wednesday to review a draft accord on sharing wealth while a technical committee of negotiators discussed the Abyei, Nuba Mountains and Southern Blue Nile regions.
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.
Kenyan Foreign Minister Kalonzo Musyoka said on Tuesday Garang and Taha had reached agreement in principle on sharing riches such as the oil-exporting country’s petroleum revenues. He added he expected the two sides to postpone signing a pact on that topic until other issues were also settled.
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 the conflict.
The government and the 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.
SHARING OIL REVENUES
A comprehensive wealth sharing agreement would cover how to distribute oil revenues and share taxes and would settle the central bank’s role and resolve questions about the currency.
Two other outstanding topics are power sharing in the interim period and the contentious issue of three areas. The three regions are part of northern Sudan, but the SPLA says they are marginalised, like the south, and have demanded self-rule for them and a waiver on Islamic law.
Delegates have said the two sides have agreed to a 50-50 split on oil revenues — a key concession by the government, which had wanted only five percent of oil revenues to go to the SPLA. Sudan’s main oil fields are in the south, where the SPLA is based.
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 that government-armed militias and warplanes killed at least 24 people over the past four days.
One of the two groups, the Sudan Liberation Army, said on Wednesday they had decapitated the leader of a government-armed militia and showed civilians his head as proof of his death.