Top negotiators resume south Sudan peace talks

NAIROBI, Dec 6 (Reuters) – The two top negotiators in south Sudan’s peace process resumed talks on Monday in a push to reach a comprehensive deal aimed at ending Africa’s longest-running civil war ahead of a Dec. 31 deadline, mediators said.

Sudanese First Vice President Ali Osman Taha met John Garang, leader of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M), in the Kenyan town of Naivasha to iron out issues blocking a final deal to end Sudan’s 21-year war.

General Lazarus Sumbeiywo, a senior Kenyan mediator, told Reuters the two men met briefly in late morning.

SPLA/M spokesman Yaser Arman said Garang and Taha “agreed on how to continue the negotiations between the two of them, and they discussed a timetable”.

Garang said on Friday he was confident of reaching and signing a comprehensive peace deal with the Khartoum government by the end of the year, which is what both sides pledged before the U.N. Security Council in November.

Visiting European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, Louis Michel, who met the Sudanese delegates and Sumbeiywo, said he was optimistic about the talks.

“I had a good impression about these discussions,” Michel told reporters. “That doesn’t mean I am naively optimistic, it is a very fragile framework, a very fragile situation, but I think all the parties are willing (to give peace a chance).”

The war, which has killed 2 million people, broadly pits the Islamist, Arabic-speaking government in the north against rebels seeking greater autonomy for the animist and Christian south. Oil, ethnicity and ideology have complicated the conflict.

Both sides have made substantial progress towards a peace deal, but dates for a final agreement have repeatedly slipped since 2003, with issues over funding SPLA/M forces and payment of lucrative oil revenues to the south yet to be resolved.

Technical committees representing the two combatants resumed detailed negotiations in Kenya on Nov. 26.

Africa’s largest country faces conflict on many fronts — mainly in the south where rebels have been fighting the government since 1983 when Khartoum tried to impose Islamic law on the entire country.

But violence has also erupted in the western Darfur region, triggering what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The U.N. Security Council has promised political and economic support once Sudan ends its southern war and the Darfur conflict.