Sudan, southern rebels race to meet peace deadline

By C. Bryson Hull

NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec 31 (Reuters) – Sudan’s government and southern rebel negotiators raced against the clock to agree on the final chapters of a peace deal Friday and clear the way for a comprehensive pact to end Africa’s longest-running civil war.

A Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement supporter dances while holding SPLM flag in Naivasha, Kenya, Friday, Dec. 31, 2004. (AP).

Striving to keep a promise to meet a year-end deadline for peace, the government and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) said mid-level officials intended to sign the last two of eight protocols that make up an overall accord to end 21 years of fighting in the oil-producing south.

All that would remain before the deal takes effect is for the top negotiators, Sudan First Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha and SPLM leader John Garang, to sign the eight protocols their staff have thrashed out over the past two years.

That ceremony is expected to be held in the presence of foreign leaders in Kenya, the host of the talks, in January.

The United States and others have put strong diplomatic pressure on Sudan to wrap up the southern peace, so Khartoum can focus on ending the separate crisis in the western region of Darfur that has overshadowed the much older southern war.

“It will change the political landscape in Khartoum. I think it will create a new opportunity to tackle the Darfur problem, and that is what we are hoping will come out of this,” U.S. Ambassador to Kenya William Bellamy told Reuters. But a leader of one of Darfur’s rebel groups said that only fair deals for all the marginalized people of Sudan would bring a lasting peace to Africa’s largest country.

“The agreement that is being signed today is partial agreement,” Sudan Liberation Army chairman Abdel Wahed Mohamed al-Nur told Reuters by telephone from Darfur. “We in the SLA inform the government and SPLM clearly that this may be a step but is in no way a solution to the problem of Sudan.”

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The African Union said security in Darfur had worsened after an attack this week by a previously unknown rebel group, forcing the U.N. to stop food deliveries to 250,000 refugees.

If the final protocols are signed in the Kenyan town of Naivaisha Friday, it will mean Garang and Taha have met the year-end deadline they pledged at an extraordinary U.N. Security Council meeting in Nairobi last month.

The council has asked the United Nations, the World Bank and others to devise a reconstruction plan, including possible debt relief, for Sudan once the country is at peace.

Taha has said long-term plans would need $1.8 billion in aid over three years, but diplomats doubt any package would reach $1 billion, and estimate $500 million at the most.

Taha, Garang and other negotiators were still in session, not long before a scheduled 1300 GMT signing.

“We are not yet through. We are still having some discussion,” Mutrif Siddiq, a negotiator and undersecretary at Sudan’s Foreign Ministry, told Reuters.

SPLM spokesman Samson Kwaje confirmed talks were continuing.

Sudanese officials said Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir might attend Friday’s ceremony. South African President Thabo Mbeki, who is in Khartoum on an official visit, will attend, his Foreign Ministry said.

The southern war has killed an estimated two million people, mostly through famine and disease, and uprooted four million. It erupted in 1983 when Khartoum tried to impose Islamic sharia law on the mainly Christian and animist south.

The combatants have already signed six preliminary protocols that would form a coalition government, decentralize power, share oil revenues and integrate their troops. In six years, the south can vote for secession.

The last two protocols deal with a permanent cease-fire and how to turn the agreements into reality on the ground.