Darfur conflict threatens broader Sudan peace process: Kenya

NAIROBI, Aug 27 (AFP) — The conflict raging Sudan’s Darfur region has affected the peace process in the south of Africa’s largest country, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki’s office said in a statement Friday.

Kibaki and US African envoy Constance Berry Newman, who Friday held talks in Nairobi, “expressed dismay that the violence in Darfur had adversely affected the peace process in southern Sudan,” Kibaki’s office said in a statement.

The statement said officials in the regional team mediating the southern Sudan conflict have raised fears that the Darfur conflict has delayed the resumption of ceasefire talks between Khartoum government and Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in Kenya and the signing of a final peace deal. It did not go into detail.

The rebellion in Darfur, western Sudan, erupted 18 months ago when minority tribes took up arms to demand an equal share of national development, spawning a conflict that has claimed up to 50,000 lives and displaced another 1.4 million.

The statement said Kenya backed pressure being exerted by the UN on the Sudanese government to pacify Darfur, a region the size of France, that is in the throes of what the UN has described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

On July 28, the Khartoum and the rebel SPLA indefinitely adjourned peace talks aimed at ending a 21-year conflict in the south.

The war in the south has killed 1.5 million people and uprooted at least four million.

“Kenya — which hosts the peace talks — urges the international community through the United States to urge the parties involved in conflict in the area to return to the negotiating table,” the statement said.