Sudan power-share deal offers blueprint for Darfur

By Katie Nguyen

NAIROBI, May 28 (Reuters) – A landmark power-sharing deal between the main players in Africa’s longest-running civil war offers a blueprint for resolving another Sudanese conflict consuming the western region of Darfur, experts said on Friday.

The government and southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) rebels signed an agreement on Wednesday on how to carve up power and manage three contested areas, a step towards ending 21 years of fighting in the oil-producing country.

“One of the major things it does is, it opens the political process in Sudan,” U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Charles Snyder told reporters in Washington.

The accords, reached after 100 days of bargaining, give Khartoum’s ruling National Congress Party (NCP) 70 percent of executive and legislative seats in the north and the SPLA the same in the south for a six-year interim period.

In contested regions crucial to Sudan’s oil industry, the deal hands the government 55 percent of seats and the SPLA 45 percent — which some believe could provide a blueprint for dividing power in other conflict areas and bringing disaffected armed factions into the peace process.

“It could provide a successful model for devolved government in those areas — not only Darfur, but also the east,” said South African lawyer Nicholas Haysom, who is advising mediators.

Political opposition movements will also be given a say through the wider power-sharing mechanism.

By allocating 10 percent of the seats in the north to the SPLA and the rest to other southern political parties, negotiators have made a gesture to groups left out of the talks.

That breakdown will be mirrored in the south with northern political parties other than the NCP taking 20 percent of the governing seats.

“This agreement is north and south, but it also talks about ratios of power-sharing that will open space in the northern government for other factions that are not just the Congress Party,” Snyder said, returning from the talks venue in Kenya.

“So there is reason to believe that the Darfurians, among others, could be accommodated in this agreement.”

Analysts say lasting peace in Africa’s biggest country can only be achieved through the inclusion of opponents, like the Darfur rebels whose demands that Khartoum hand out a fairer share of power and resources echo those of the SPLA.

OPTIMISM

Wednesday’s deal sparked optimism about an end to the continent’s oldest civil war after months of tough negotiations.

“I think it’s fair. Hard-fought agreements can be good agreements because the text has been reached through quite detailed and difficult discussions,” Haysom said. “At the heart of it, it is about self-determination and the right of self-administration,” he said of the 46-page power-sharing text.

“We have every reason to be optimistic. This agreement, if it gets implemented, is a good one. It could begin to change Sudan,” Snyder said.

But aid workers in southern Sudan said reaction to the accords had been muted, with many locals in the SPLA stronghold of Rumbek not sure what to make of them.

“There is a lack of understanding over what comes next and the importance of signing the protocols compared to the comprehensive peace agreement,” one U.N. humanitarian worker in the region said.

“Of course some people also have an underlying suspicion of the sustainability of what is going on.”