Sudanese government and rebel negotiators delay cease-fire agreement, says chief mediator
NAIROBI, July 19, 2004 (AP) — Sudanese government and southern rebel negotiators need several more days to complete a cease-fire agreement because of the quantity of work involved, the chief mediator of the peace talks said Monday.
The negotiators have been working since June 27 to set a cease-fire date and hammer out details on possible peacekeeping and monitoring operations after a final peace deal ending the 21-year conflict is signed.
The talks, which are also expected to decide on reductions in troop sizes and what will happen to the demobilized government and rebel troops, were due to end on Monday.
But the talks will continue for a few more days, said chief mediator Lazaro Sumbeiywo, a retired Kenyan general. “It’s the quantity of things they have to work on that is delaying them.”
Sumbeiywo could not say when the current talks being held in the town of Naivasha, 100 kilometers west of Nairobi, will end, though the government and rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army signed a cessation of hostilities agreement in October 2002 that is to remain in effect for as long as negotiations continue.
Since the talks began in Kenya in June 2002, negotiators have agreed on how to share power and wealth in Africa’s largest country and what to do with their armed forces during a six-year transition period. They also agreed on how to govern three conflict areas in central Sudan during the transition period.
Separate negotiations to end a 17-month insurgency by other rebels in Sudan ‘s western Darfur region, where tens of thousands have been killed and more than a million forced from their homes, broke down Saturday in neighboring Ethiopia.
Sudanese government and southern rebel officials were not immediately available Monday to comment on the continuation of talks to end the southern conflict.
On June 5, the government and rebels signed a document compiling six previously negotiated protocols into a framework agreement.
Sumbeiywo said June 28 that once negotiators finish the present cease-fire talks, they will work out how to implement a final peace deal. No date is set for those talks, Sumbeiywo said Monday.
The southern conflict broke out in 1983 after the rebels from the mainly animist and Christian south took up arms against the predominantly Arab and Muslim north.
The insurgents say they are fighting for better treatment and for southerners to have the right to choose whether to remain part of Sudan . Southerners will vote in a referendum at the end of the transition on whether to secede.
Although often simplified as a religious war, the conflict is fueled by historical disputes and competition for resources, including major oil reserves.