INTERVIEW-Clashes may hit Sudan even after peace pact-official

By William Maclean

NAIROBI, June 15 (Reuters) – Clashes are likely even after a final peace deal in southern Sudan as irregular forces left out of the settlement jockey for position, the head of the U.N. rapid reaction force said on Tuesday.

Brigadier-General Greg Mitchell added in an interview with Reuters he also expected a period of truce violations by the main foes in Africa’s longest-running civil war — government troops and southern rebels — after any final deal.

He said any U.N. peace force sent into the south to help shore up a settlement could probably not monitor all of the violence given the size of Africa’s largest country.

“The potential for violence is there, based on past experience in other places,” said Mitchell, a Canadian who commands the Denmark-based Multinational Stand-By High Readiness Brigade for U.N. operations, known as Shirbrig.

The government and Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) agreed in May on sharing power and managing three disputed areas, lifting key hurdles to a formal deal expected later this year on ending 21 years of war in the oil-producing south.

“We’re not just dealing with two parties, we are also dealing with 30 or 40 of their loosely allied ‘allies’ that you might refer to as militias and renegade groups of warlords.

“We expect that as the peace agreement unfolds there will be disaffected parties that don’t believe they are being looked after well enough…and therefore we expect for a while the violence to increase. That’s just a matter of practicality.”

Fearful of diluting their own control of peace efforts, the Khartoum government and the SPLA have given no role in the talks to other armed groups around the country, whose demands for a share of power and resources are very similar to the SPLA’s.

Mitchell’s remarks on a visit to Kenya echo those of other analysts who say the exclusion of many factions from the deal may complicate efforts to stabilise the nation of 32 million.

“The fewer people in the negotiating room, the more marginalised other parties tend to feel,” Mitchell said.

Later this month, the government and SPLA start negotiations on implementing peace and whether to allow a U.N. force in to shore up the process. Mediators say there is an increasing recognition among both sides that one will be necessary.

The peace pact is not connected to a separate dispute in Sudan’s western Darfur region, where the United Nations estimates fighting has affected more than 2 million people.

The 16-nation, mainly European, Shirbrig is expected to provide the core of the initial headquarters staff of any future U.N. force in Sudan, military sources say.

The self-sufficient Shirbrig, with its own headquarters, logistics and communications, has worked previously in the Horn of Africa, Liberia and Ivory Coast and is ready to deploy within 15 to 30 days of a request by the U.N. Security Council.

“I do not expect to be able to identify every single ceasefire violation. We will not be able to cover all of the areas with the small numbers that we will have… We will try to concentrate on key areas of potential conflict,” Mitchell added.

He said the main areas at risk of continuing conflict were places where combatants were in proximity or offered what he called “well-known resources” – a reference to oil.

“I have no illusion that there will not be ceasefire violations. There will… If soldiers are facing their former belligerents across 10 metres as opposed to 100 metres or 100 miles, they are far more likely to be in conflict,” he said.