Sudan peace deal expected within one month
By Opheera McDoom
KHARTOUM, Feb 17 (Reuters) – The Sudanese government expects to sign a peace agreement with rebels within a month, ending more than two decades of civil war that has ravaged the south of Africa’s largest country, the foreign minister said on Tuesday.
Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail was speaking as the two sides opened talks in Kenya on how to share power in the oil-producing country and the status of three disputed areas claimed by both sides.
But Ismail said Khartoum would not talk directly with other rebel groups involved in a separate uprising in the western Darfur region, where aid groups estimate a year of conflict has displaced up to one million people.
Instead Sudan would announce a conference for all Darfur leaders and political parties, including the rebels, to be chaired by Chadian President Idriss Deby in Khartoum within days and would commit to whatever the talks come up with.
Around two million people have been killed in Sudan’s civil war in the south, which has pitted the northern Islamist government against rebels from the largely Christian and animist south who want more autonomy.
Ismail said he expected the latest round of peace talks between the government and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) which resumed in Naivasha on Tuesday to be the last.
“We are expecting this round of negotiations to hopefully be the final one… Maximum it will end by March 16. We will do our best to finish before that, but I would not expect it to continue after that,” he told Reuters in an interview.
He said Abyei, one of the three contentious areas, was part of the north and not the south. But the government was prepared to compromise by saying the area, which contains oil reserves, was a separate district belonging to the presidency, he added.
“This is our position. I don’t think we are going to change it… We try to be more flexible. But definitely it will not go to be part of the south,” he said.
DARFUR CONFERENCE
The minister said President Omar Hassan al-Bashir had declared major operations in Darfur over as of February 16, and that Khartoum had fully opened humanitarian access to aid agencies and announced a general amnesty for the western rebels, who accuse Khartoum of marginalising the poor area.
“We will call for a conference for the Darfurian leaders to come and we will ask Idriss Deby in Khartoum to chair this conference and it is going to be in the coming few days,” Ismail said, adding Sudan was asking the European Union to act as observers to the talks.
He said the government refused to go to proposed Geneva talks to discuss humanitarian access in the remote arid region because direct talks with the Darfur rebel groups would legitimise them as sole representatives of the region.
“Geneva talks — we refused to go to this because we don’t want to…recognise the rebels are the sole representatives of Darfur. They are not,” he said.
“If they want to do anything, let them come here with the other Darfurian leaders…but with them alone and separately we will not do it.”
Ismail also said the United States had agreed to release two Sudanese prisoners from Guantanamo Bay and a Sudanese delegation was negotiating how to return them to Khartoum.
He said no decision had been taken about the status of 10 other Sudanese in the camp, most of whom were arrested in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“The decision that they should be released…has been taken. The question is how we can transport them to Sudan,” he said, adding they would be treated as citizens with full rights once they returned.