Sudan government, southern rebels adjourn peace talks for Ramadan

NAIROBI, Oct 16 (AFP) — Sudan’s government and the main southern rebel group adjourned peace talks here for the month of Ramadan, without having agreed on a permanent ceasefire or final peace deal to end Africa’s longest war, the chief mediator said.

Sudan’s Vice-president Ali Osman Taha (R) and SPLM leader John Garang (C) walk into the venue of a press conference in Nairobi, at which an adjournment to the peace talks was announced owing to the impending holy month of Ramadhan (AFP).

Khartoum’s delegation, led by Vice President Ali Osman Taha, and his opposite number John Garang, leader of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), have been meeting in the Kenyan capital since October 7 to try to hammer out the final details of a peace pact to end the 21-year-old civil war in southern Sudan.

Although no final agreement was reached, “the two sides agreed that a joint SPLA-government force will be positioned in eastern Sudan after both parties pull out…” chief mediator, retired Kenyan army general Lazaro Sumbeiywo, told a press conference in Nairobi on Saturday.

Sumbeiywo said a technical committee has been formed to negotiate issues of funding of the armed forces and the time and manner in which numerous militia groups will be “integrated into structures of the Sudan Armed Forces and the SPLA.”

The current round of talks is the latest in a series that has gone on for more than two years in Kenya.

When the talks adjourned for the Muslim holy month, the government and the SPLM/A appeared to be very close to the finish line, having agreed to six protocols on key political issues, leaving only technical issues on a comprehensive ceasefire and security arrangements to be ironed out, the mediators said.

Garang’s SPLM/A took up arms in 1983 to end marginalisation of the black animist and Christian south by Muslim, Arab Khartoum.

Control of natural resources, espcially the 250,000 barrels of oil pumped from mainly southern Sudanese soil every day, has also played a large part in the conflict that has claimed at least 1.5 million people and displaced four million others.

The protracted negotiations adjourned amid a threat of international sanctions hanging over Khartoum for its role in a separate conflict in the western region of Darfur, where up to 50,000 people have died and 1.4 million others are displaced.