Bashir, Kiir to hold talks Monday over Sudan’s peace
December 1, 2007 (JUBA, Sudan) — Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir will hold talks with southern leader Salva Kiir next week on implementing a north-south peace deal now in crisis, a southern official said on Saturday.
Former southern rebels walked out of a national coalition government in October, complaining that Khartoum had failed to implement key parts of the 2005 peace deal including the redeployment of northern soldiers from the south.
Crisis talks between the former foes who made peace after over two decades of civil war ground to a halt last month when a team of top officials from both sides failed to make headway.
“We expect the next meeting on Monday will be focusing on key practical issues on how to overcome the crisis,” southern Presidential Affairs Minister Luka Biong said. A six-person team of high-level officials may also be brought back in, he said.
Tensions were further fuelled in mid-November after Bashir called for a northern militia, which fought southern rebels in the civil war, to open training camps and gather fighters not for war, but to be “ready for anything”.
Kiir flew to Khartoum to see Bashir on Thursday, but that was just to “clear the clouds”, Biong said. He said a recent trip by Kiir to the United States, a foe of Khartoum, and the militia remarks had sown misunderstanding and eroded trust.
Kiir’s party — the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement — has given Khartoum until January 9 to make headway on implementation. Their demands include that a north-south border be drawn and that the oil-rich Abyei area be demarcated.
An independent commission mapped out the Abyei region over two years ago but Khartoum rejected its findings and the border area has remained in limbo and without a formal administration.
The semi-autonomous south, which will hold a referendum on southern succession in 2011, endorsed the findings of the team of international experts. Biong said earlier that oil revenues due to the south from Abyei had not been allocated.
“Our estimate is that it may be nearly $1 billion since 2005,” he said.
The minister, who cites Abyei as the biggest obstacle to north-south harmony, said U.N. monitors had been unable to fulfil their mandate in the area because access had been restricted by northern soldiers.
No new proposal around the impasse from Khartoum has yet been acceptable, Biong said. “Whatever they are suggesting is just to take out the oil,” he said.
Around 2 million people died during decades of north-south fighting, fuelled by the discovery of oil and against a backdrop of ethnic and religious differences. The north-south conflict is separate from ongoing violence in Darfur.
(Reuters)