South Sudan rebel says new fighting in threatens deal

CAIRO, April 23 (Reuters) – A peace deal to end Africa’s longest civil war in southern Sudan would be pointless if fighting continued in the rest of the vast state, a senior member of the southern rebel group said on Friday.

Pa’gan Amum, one of the chief rebel negotiators at talks in Kenya, also accused the government of stalling after its delegation head failed to return from a trip to Khartoum.

The talks aim to end 20 years of fighting between the northern Islamist government and the mainly Christian and animist south. But a separate conflict has erupted in the western Darfur region which U.N. officials have called ethnic cleansing.

“The…peace process is being negatively affected,” Amum said, referring to Darfur as well as new fighting in the southern Shilluk kingdom.

“If they (the government) continue killing people there will be no point in reaching an agreement because…what we want is not a peaceful graveyard, we want peace as an opportunity for people to live as human beings,” he told Reuters by telephone from Kenya.

The civil war, which has claimed about two million lives, has been complicated by issues of oil, ethnicity and ideology.

Talks have been in limbo since the government’s chief negotiator First Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha went to Khartoum for “two days” of consultations last Saturday.

Amum said uncertainty over Taha’s return was obstructing negotiations and that Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) head John Garang was in southern Sudan and would only return to Kenya when Taha did.

He said a powersharing agreement had been reached so that the SPLM would get 70 percent of power in the south with 30 percent for other political forces, and a similar system in the north with the government controlling 70 percent.

They had also decided President Omar Hassan al-Bashir would remain president with Garang as vice president and had agreed to a U.S. compromise on the oil-rich Abyei region.

But he said the government now wanted a second vice president and had not yet agreed to a rebel proposal to exempt non-Muslims from Islamic Sharia law in Khartoum.

Most technical issues, apart from how to share power in the areas of the Southern Blue Nile and Nuba Mountains, had been agreed, but Taha’s absence had prevented any signing.

“Largely the committees’ work is over but they need to present their reports to principals and Taha is not there. So we do not know what to do,” he said.

He said the southern deal would not include Darfur where rebels launched a revolt last year, accusing Khartoum of arming Arab militias to loot and burn African villages.

But he condemned Sudan’s policy in Darfur and a new conflict in Shilluk where observers say armed forces and government-aligned militias are fighting SPLM troops.

“What is happening in (Shilluk) is a clear violation by the government of Sudan of the cessation of hostilities with the SPLM,” he said. “Again this is another scenario of ethnic cleansing and genocide just like what they are doing in Darfur.

“This is casting a lot of doubts on their commitment to the peace process itself and…also doubts whether this peace agreement will be implemented.”