Sudan’s VP and rebel leader resume high level talks to end civil war

By TOM MALITI, Associated Press Writer

NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec 6, 2004 (AP) — Sudan’s Vice President and the leader of the main southern Sudanese rebel group met briefly Monday as they resumed high level talks to end a 21-year conflict in southern Sudan, a Sudanese diplomat said.

SLM leader shacks hands with Sudanese vice president.

Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Mohammed Taha and John Garang, leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, last month pledged to meet a Dec. 31 deadline to end the conflict at a special meeting of the U.N. Security Council in Kenya.

More than two million people have died _ mostly from war-induced famine _ during the conflict, Africa’s longest-running civil war.

Taha and Garang will return to the negotiating table Tuesday after they have been briefed on progress made by technical negotiators who have been meeting since Nov. 26, said Ad’Dirdeiry Hamed, Sudan’s deputy ambassador to Kenya.

Hamed declined to give any details about progress negotiators may have made in their talks.

Peace talks on the southern Sudan conflict are separate from others focusing on the conflict in Sudan’s western region of Darfur in which an estimated 1.8 million people have been driven from their homes.

The latest bid to end the southern conflict began in Kenya in 2002. The two sides have agreed on how to share power and wealth.

Rebels from the predominantly animist and Christian south took up arms against the mainly Muslim and Arab north to fight for greater equality for the south and for southerners to have the right to choose whether to remain part of Sudan.