US returns to stalled Sudan peace talks after sanctions threat
WASHINGTON, April 14 (AFP) — The United States said it had sent back to Sudan’s stalled peace talks a diplomat it had withdrawn from the negotiations over the weekend in a bid to convince Khartoum and southern rebels to wrap up a peace deal quickly.
The State Department said Jeff Millington, the US special advisor for the talks underway in Navaisha, Kenya, had “gone back to send another message to the two sides that it’s time to make the decisions.”
“The parties are really facing their final decisions at this moment,” spokesman Richard Boucher said, a day after warning the two sides that they might face US sanctions should they fail to agree to deal by April 21.
Millington had left the Kenyan-mediated negotiations on Saturday “because we think that everything is on the table,” Boucher had said on Monday.
An official in the mediation, who asked not to be named, told AFP on Tuesday that a final deal was being delayed by disagreements on whether the capital Khartoum would be under Islamic law during the transitional period after a final accord is signed.
In July 2002, both the Khartoum government and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) agreed that areas in the north should be under Islamic law while the south would be free of religious laws during an interim period of six years of self rule after which the south would vote on a referendum.
The government insists on the 2002 deal, but the SPLA argues that despite being in the north, Khartoum is capital for all, the official said.
Last week, mediators announced that Vice President Ali Osman Taha and SPLA leader John Garang had broadly agreed on a formula to share power as well as the administration of three disputed regions.
But a complete resolution has eluded the negotiators and Washington has grown increasingly frustrated by the slow pace of progress in the talks, particularly after the two sides missed a December 31 deadline for a deal to which they had pledged themselves in an October meeting with US Secretary of State Colin Powell.