U.S. will help Sudan implement peace deal – Powell
By Irwin Arieff
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 31 (Reuters) – The United States will help Sudan’s government and southern Sudanese rebels implement the peace deal they signed in Kenya on Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said.
Amid singing and cries of joy at a ceremony in Naivasha, Kenya, delegates from the government and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement signed the last two of eight peace protocols that together form an accord aiming to end 21 years of war in the oil-producing south.
The conflict has killed an estimated 2 million people, mainly through famine and disease, and uprooted 4 million.
At Washington’s urging, the parties had promised the U.N. Security Council they would sign the final protocols by Friday.
“The United States will strongly support implementation of the peace agreement, that will commence following the Jan. 9 signing ceremony, in order to promote stability, prosperity, and democracy in a unified Sudan,” Powell said.
His statement was released at U.N. headquarters in New York as he arrived there for a meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the global relief effort for the Indian Ocean tsunami catastrophe.
“We are firmly committed to normalizing our relationship with the new government that will be formed as a result of the North-South accord and to assisting with reconstruction and development, but this can only take place with a Sudan that is at peace, with the peace process being implemented throughout the entire country,” Powell said.
The accords signed in Naivasha do not cover a separate conflict in Sudan’s western Darfur region, where more than a year of fighting has created what the United Nations says is one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
But Powell said that carrying out the terms of the Naivasha accord would send a message to the parties in the Darfur conflict — and throughout the world — that “the most intractable of conflicts can be resolved.”
“We expect all the parties to work together decisively and immediately to end the violence in Darfur,” Powell said. “There are two tracks, but they must lead to the same point: peace, stability, and prosperity for all of the people of Sudan.”
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Danforth, who has been active in the Sudan peace process for years, agreed that while the signing was welcome, it was only an incremental step in bringing peace to the vast northeast African nation.
“The business of creating a country that hangs together is a business that goes on and on. There is never a time when you say, ‘Wow, we have reached the finish line and that is it,'” he said in a telephone interview. “That is clearly not the case with respect to Sudan.”
“It is now very important, on an urgent basis, for all parties to bring peace to Darfur,” Danforth said. “The U.S. Congress is not going to appropriate — and the president is not going to agree to — an aid package if people are being bombed in Darfur.”