Sudan govt, SPLA rebels still negotiating-mediator
NAIROBI, May 12 (Reuters) – Sudan’s government and its southern rebel foes have agreed the outlines of a solution for two final disputes blocking a peace deal but still need to thrash out the details, both sides said on Wednesday.
Agreement on the status of three disputed regions and how to share power once their conflict ends would clear the way for a comprehensive pact to end Africa’s longest-running civil war, which has killed an estimated two million people.
The 21-year-old war pits the Islamic, Arabic-speaking government in Khartoum against mainly animist and Christian rebels fighting for greater autonomy for the south of Sudan, Africa’s biggest country.
The conflict, which has been complicated by issues of oil, ethnicity and ideology, has uprooted four million people and contributed to recurrent famine and disease.
Officials of the Khartoum government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) said their negotiators at long-running talks in neighboring Kenya were trying to resolve differences about the two topics but some details remained unresolved.
“They have agreed on general outlines but not specifics,” a Sudanese government official in Nairobi said.
“We have resolved the main issues on powersharing and the three areas,” said SPLA spokesman Yassir Arman. “What remains (to be settled) is the percentages of powersharing in the Southern Blue Nile and Nuba Mountains where the government is suggesting taking 60 percent and giving the SPLA 40 percent.”
He was referring to percentages of jobs in regional-level executives, legislatures and civil service. He also said the two sides had yet to agree shareouts of state jobs at the national level.
Eight months of talks in neighboring Kenya between Sudan First Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha and SPLA leader John Garang have appeared close to a settlement several times before but a variety of sticking points have emerged to slow progress.
U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters in Washington on Tuesday that Khartoum and the SPLA had told his government a conclusion was near.
“It is for the first time that they have indicated to us that they think they have resolved the issues, were writing them down and expected to sign soon,” he said. “But we have not seen that happen in the actuality yet. We will try to help them reach that kind of speedy conclusion.”
Diplomats observing the talks said progress had been made in the past week but talks were still going on about the wording of several issues.
“Everything is heading in the right direction. The two leaders agree on almost everything in broad terms but putting it in writing is something else,” one said.
This round of peace talks began in June 2002, and the sides have already signed deals on splitting state and religion, forming a postwar army, letting the south hold a referendum on independence after an interim period and sharing oil revenues when the war ends.
Africa’s largest country earns more than $2 billion a year from its growing oil output of about 250,000 barrels a day, riches for an impoverished country of 30 million that only began petroleum exports in the late 1990s.
However, any peace deal emerging from the Naivasha talks will not cover a separate conflict which has raged for more than a year in western Sudan, creating what the United Nations says is one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world