Sudan’s Taha returns to Kenya for peace talks

NAIROBI, April 25 (Reuters) – Sudanese First Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha returned to Kenya on Sunday to resume negotiations with southern rebels on ending Africa’s longest-running civil war, the Sudanese embassy said.

An embassy spokeswoman said Taha was on his way to the venue of the talks in Naivasha, northwest of Nairobi, to meet mediators who have been working on proposals for a final peace deal with rebels of the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA).

Both sides have requested assistance from regional mediating body IGAD, trying to bring an end to 21 years of war in the oil-exporting country where the southern-based SPLA has been fighting for greater autonomy from the Arabic-speaking north.

Talks between Taha and SPLA leader Garang have stagnated over whether Islamic sharia law should be imposed in the capital Khartoum, in the Muslim north of the country, power-sharing, and how to govern the Southern Blue Nile and Nuba Mountains regions.

“He (Taha) is going to see how far the IGAD secretariat has gone in trying to come up with a breakthrough in outstanding issues,” the embassy spokeswoman said.

Taha left the talks on April 17 for consultations in Khartoum.

In his absence chief mediator Lazaro Sumbeiywo of the InterGovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) held separate talks with Garang on IGAD proposals aimed at breaking the two sides’ apparent deadlock on power-sharing and other matters.

Garang later left Kenya and his aides said he would return only when Taha came back to Kenya to rejoin the discussions.

There was no immediate word on when Garang might rejoin Taha in Naivasha.

More than two million people have been killed since southern rebels started fighting for greater autonomy in 1983. Often depicted as a war pitting the Muslim north against the Christian south, the conflict is complicated by disputes over oil, ethnicity, religion and ideology.

The peace talks do not apply to a separate conflict in western Darfur region in which about 10,000 people have been killed and an estimated 900,000 displaced.