Sudan govt, rebels agree wealth share pact
By Wangui Kanina
NAIROBI, Jan 5 (Reuters) – Sudan’s government and its southern rebel foes agreed at peace talks on Monday how to share the oil-producing country’s wealth when their 20-year-old civil war ends, the two sides said in a joint statement.
“We are glad to inform our people all over the Sudan and the international community that we have reached an agreement on wealth sharing,” the statement said.
“This covers the division of oil and non-oil revenue, the management of the oil sector, and the monetary authority in the country.”
The war has killed two million people and uprooted four million others, pitting the Islamist government in Khartoum against rebels in the south, which is mainly animist or Christian. Disputes over oil, ethnicity, ideology have complicated the conflict.
Monday’s accord, hammered out by rebel leader John Garang and the government’s first vice president Osman Ali Taha, leaves two other topics to be settled before a final peace can be signed — sharing power and the status of three contested areas.
Talks on the three areas of Abyei, Southern Blue Nile and Nuba Mountains will continue on Tuesday, delegates said. Formal negotiations on power sharing have not yet started.
The wealth pact provides for a central bank with two branches — one in the south operating international-style banking and one in the north that will operate Islamic banking that outlaws the charging of interest, the statement said.
They have already agreed on sharing oil revenue during a six-year interim period, splitting state and religion, forming a post-war army and letting the south hold a referendum on independence after the interim period.
The latest round of peace talks between the government and Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) began in early 2002, but do not cover a separate rebellion taking place in western Sudan.
The United States has played a leading role in exerting pressure on both sides in Sudan to reach an agreement, hoping to transform relations with a country it lists as a “state sponsor of terrorism” and where crude oil production is rising.
Despite progress toward ending the war with Garang’s SPLA rebels in the south, Sudan’s government last week accused neighboring Eritrea of backing a separate rebel group in the Darfur region in the west of Sudan.
The United Nations estimates that more than 600,000 people have been uprooted by fighting in Darfur, which analysts say could complicate efforts to strike a peace deal in the south.
Eritrea denied the accusations, saying it would be impossible for it to provide backing to rebels in western Sudan, which lies far from its border with Sudan in the east.