Sudan govt, SPLA rebels extend ceasefire as talks continue
NAIROBI, May 1 (Reuters) – Sudan’s government and main southern rebels signed a one-month truce extension, days after the top negotiators trying to end a 21-year civil war restarted talks following a two-week break, mediators said on Saturday.
Rebel leader John Garang of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and Sudanese First Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha restarted talks on Thursday to try to end Africa’s longest-running conflict.
“The cessation of hostilities was signed late on Friday to last for one month, and the principals (Garang and Taha) are still meeting,” Chief mediator Lazarus Sumbeiywo said by telephone from the Kenyan town of Naivasha.
The truce, which first came into force in late 2001, is meant to create a non-confrontational atmosphere as talks progress.
But in mid-April, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a mediation group of East African nations, said at least 70,000 people had been driven from their homes by a month of fighting in the Shilluk kingdom, home of the black African Shilluk tribe.
IGAD mediators said pro-government forces attacked civilians and destroyed villages in Sudan’s Upper Nile region, and warned that the fresh violence could harm efforts to end the civil war.
U.N. officials said the violence pitted army troops and militia loyal to the government against the southern SPLA rebels, but IGAD’s truce monitoring teas said it had seen evidence of violence committed deliberately against civilians.
The negotiations to end the conflict have stalled in recent weeks with the two parties unable to agree on various issues, including whether Islamic sharia law should be imposed in the capital Khartoum.
Another sticking point is agreeing on 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 claimed by both sides.
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 displaced.