Sudan govt,rebels close to peace deal: US official

NAIROBI, May 14 (Reuters) – Sudan’s government and southern rebels are close to signing an accord paving the way for a peace deal to end Africa’s longest civil war, but they need to make tough political decisions, a top U.S. official said on Friday.

First Vice President Ali Osman Taha and John Garang, leader of the rebel Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) are locked in talks hosted by Kenya over the status of two disputed regions and how to share power once the war ends.

Diplomats are hopeful that once these issues are resolved there can be a comprehensive peace deal to end Sudan’s 21-year civil war which has killed two million people in Africa’s biggest country.

The war largely pits the Islamic Arabic-speaking government in Khartoum against southern rebels fighting for greater autonomy in the mainly animist and Christian south.

However, the conflict has been complicated by oil, ethnicity and ideology.

“The truth is they are very close, they just have to make decisions. The gaps between them are not enormous gaps but they have to make hard political choices,” Assistant Secretary of State Charles Snyder told a news conference in Nairobi, without elaborating.

He said negotiations were taking too long in light of the escalating conflict in the western region of Darfur and fighting in the south’s Upper Nile region.

Snyder declined to say when the two parties would sign an accord.

The sticking points in the latter stages of the talks include whether Islamic sharia law should be imposed in the capital, Khartoum, and the mechanism of power-sharing during a six-year transition period after a peace deal.

Minister of State Najib al-Kheir Abdel Wahhab told reporters at Cairo airport on Friday he expected an agreement on the status of the capital “within the current month”.