Peace talks to end southern civil war resume under shadow of Darfur crisis

By CHRIS TOMLINSON, Associated Press Writer

NAIROBI, Oct 07, 2004 (AP) — Peace talks to end the 21-year civil war in southern Sudan resumed Thursday, with a separate conflict in nearby Darfur region casting a shadow over what mediators hope will be a sprint to a final peace agreement.

Sudan’s First Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha smiles as he arrives in Nairobi for Southern Sudan peace talks due to resume October 7, 2004.

The conflict between the Sudan People’s Liberation Army and the northern government over control of southern Sudan has been distinct from the current clashes in Darfur — which the U.S. government has called genocide.

But southern rebel leader John Garang said a peace agreement to end the war in the south would serve as a model for solving Darfur’s conflict, which has pitted western rebels against Arab militias and government troops. Mediators also echoed the sentiment.

U.N. envoy Jan Pronk, who came to the talks in Kenya’s capital from the U.N. headquarters in New York, said the international community expected the government and the rebels to move quickly to reach a final agreement after two years of talks.

“There is a widely held expectation that this meeting move steadily forward on security arrangements,” Pronk told negotiators, mediators and observers in Nairobi. “This is the time to complete what we started.”

Rebel and government leaders have already signed six protocols addressing most of the political disputes. All that remains for the two sides to work out are procedural matters to end a war in which more than 2 million people have perished, mainly through war-induced famine. Another two million people have been driven from their homes in Africa’s largest country.

The peace talks to end the war in the south stalled after international attention shifted to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. Some diplomats have expressed concern that the Darfur conflict could scuttle the talks, since the western rebels have made many of the same demands made by Garang’s group.

The talks to end the southern civil war restarted the day after British Prime Minister Tony Blair visited Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, and extracted a promise that the Sudanese government would wrap up the talks with the southern and western rebels by Dec. 31.

Blair said Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir has also agreed to a joint withdrawal of government and western rebel forces in Darfur and to accept a big increase in international cease-fire monitors in the region.

More than 50,000 people have been killed in Darfur and another 1.4 million have been driven from their homes since February 2003. Originally a clash between African farmers and Arab nomads, the conflict has grown into a counterinsurgency in which pro-government Arab militia have raped, killed and burned the villages of their enemy.

The government denies allegations that it supports the Arab militia, known as the Janjaweed.