Sudan government, rebels finalise wealth-sharing agreement
NAIROBI, Jan 5 (AFP) — Sudan’s government and main southern rebel group finalised outstanding details of a wealth-sharing agreement, a key component of talks aimed at ending 20 years of civil war, officials from both sides said.
They said Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Taha and the leader of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), John Garang, are expected to sign the document on Wednesday.
“We have agreed and finalised details on wealth-sharing. It’s an agreement that is ready for signing on Wednesday,” SPLA spokesman Yasser Arman told AFP by telephone from the Kenyan town of Naivasha, 80 kilometres (50 miles) west of Nairobi, where the talks are taking place.
“We have finalised an agreement of 50-50 sharing of non-oil revenue” such as taxes and other government income, he added.
“We have agreed to have one central bank with two windows, one in the north and another in the south… Other agreements are in the area of oil commissions and currency,” added Arman.
“This will allow the SPLA to stand on its own feet during the interim period,” he said.
In 2002, Khartoum and the SPLA struck a breakthrough accord granting the south the right to self-determination after a six-year transition period.
An official close to the government delegation confirmed Monday’s deal.
“We have agreed on all aspects of wealth-sharing,” said the official, who asked not to be named.
“The breakthrough occurred at 10:45 pm (1945 GMT) so everything is ready for signing. There is nothing in wealth-sharing that is pending,” he said.
“Now the principals will deal with the remaining issues,” he added, referring to power-sharing and the status of three contested regions of Sudan.
A source in the mediating body, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, also confirmed the deal, saying: “They have finalised details on wealth-sharing and it will be ready for signing on Wednesday.”
The bulk of this deal was settled late last month, when it was agreed that the SPLA and the government would receive equal shares of revenue from the country’s 300,000 barrels a day of oil.
The talks resumed on Friday, having failed to conclude with a comprehensive peace deal by the end of 2003 in line with a self-imposed deadline.
Asked on Friday when the current round would end, chief mediator Lazaro Sumbeiywo, said: “This is an open meeting, it will end when the two principals decide.”
Two days earlier, Arman told AFP: “We are very, very, optimistic that we shall deliver peace in Sudan in the opening month of 2004,” said Arman.
Before adjourning on late on Wednesday for the New Year and Sudan’s Independence Day, mediators reported that both parties had made progress on the status of the three disputed areas: Abyei, southern Blue Nile State and the Nuba Mountains.
The SPLA claims those areas although they are not geographically part of the south.
The war in Sudan, which erupted in 1983, is the longest-running civil conflict on the African continent. It has pitted the south, where most observe traditional African religions and Christianity, against the wealtheir Muslim, Arabized north.
The conflict, which has been fuelled and complicated by the discovery of vast oil reserves, has claimed at least 1.5 million lives and displaced an estimated four million people.