Sudanese resume talks to end war in south
NAIROBI, April 29 (Reuters) – The two top negotiators trying to end Sudan’s civil war resumed talks on Thursday after a two-week break to try to end Africa’s longest-running conflict, mediators said.
Chief mediator Lazarus Sumbeiywo told Reuters that First Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha and rebel leader John Garang were discussing a proposal formulated by regional mediators aimed at breaking a deadlock in the negotiations.
“We have discussed (the proposal) with them and we have left it to them to negotiate” Sumbeiywo said. He declined to outline the proposal, saying it was up to the two leaders to disclose the contents.
The discussions in the Kenyan town of Naivasha between Taha and John Garang, the leader of the rebel Sudanese People’s liberation Army (SPLA), have been stalled for weeks.
The sticking points are whether Islamic sharia law should be imposed in the capital Khartoum, power-sharing during a six-year year transition period that will follow a final peace deal, and how to govern the Southern Blue Nile and Nuba mountains regions.
Taha left the talks on April 17 for consultations with his colleagues in the capital Khartoum. Garang later left on a visit to Eritrea. Both men returned to Kenya in the past week but resumed official talks only on Thursday.
More than two million people have been killed since southern rebels started fighting for greater autonomy from Khartoum 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 cover a separate conflict in western Sudan’s Darfur region, in which about 10,000 people have been killed and up to one million.
In Nairobi, about 100 Sudanese held a march to protest against the current deadlock in the talks and to urge both the government and the SPLA to resolve the deadlock and bring peace to Africa’s largest country.
The protestors carried placards reading “Give the people of Sudan their dignity”, and “We want a just and fair peace now”.