Mediators urge Sudan foes to agree on disputed area
NAIROBI, March 18 (Reuters) – Mediators in talks to end Sudan’s 21-year-old civil war urged both sides on Thursday to resolve a dispute over whether an oil-rich area in the centre of the country should belong to the north or south.
The Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) – grouping Uganda, Eritrea, Somalia, Kenya, Sudan, Djibouti and Ethiopia – may even convene a summit to jumpstart flagging talks between the Sudanese government and the main rebel group.
“We are trying to urge them to accept that these talks cannot collapse. All of us (IGAD) are speaking with the same voice,” Kenya’s Foreign Minister Kalonzo Musyoka told a news conference.
The mainly Christian and animist Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) rebels have waged war since 1983 against the Islamist government in the north of the giant oil-producing country for greater autonomy in the south.
The latest round of talks between First Vice President Ali Osman Taha and SPLA leader John Garang hit deadlock over whether oil-rich Abyei should belong to the north or south.
“We are even contemplating, if it comes to that, calling a special summit of IGAD heads of state to be able to tell them we cannot allow this process to be bogged down by Abyei,” Musyoka said.
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said in January the Kenya-hosted talks had no authority to settle the status of three disputed areas – Nuba Mountains, Southern Blue Nile and Abyei.
Both sides have reached agreement over the first two areas but Abyei, currently held by the government, remains contentious.
Khartoum suspects the SPLA of trying to annex Abyei to the south in preparation for possible secession from the north. The SPLA denies this.
The war, in which two million people have been killed and four million displaced, is complicated by factors such as ethnicity and religion as well as ideology and economics.
Apart from Abyei, power-sharing is the final issue to be resolved before a much-delayed peace accord can be signed.