Sudan peace deal ‘nearly mission impossible’: chief mediator
NAIROBI, Jan 4 (AFP) — The chief mediator in Sudan peace talks said a final accord due to be signed next Sunday to end 21 years of fighting in southern Sudan was “nearly impossible” to achieve, amid mistrust between rival sides.
“It was a monumental task, nearly mission impossible,” Lazaro Sumbeiywo, a retired Kenyan army general who was mediating the talks between the Arabic-speaking Khartoum government and rebels from the mainly black African and Christian south, told a press conference in Nairobi.
Sumbeiywo explained that efforts to bring Sudan’s Vice President Ali Osman Taha and Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) into the talks in September 2003 after low-level delegates failed to move forward proved to be the hardest challenge.
The talks, which started in Kenya early 2002 and covered issues ranging from power-sharing to agreement on a vote on independence in the south after six years of interim self-rule, when oil receipts will be shared on a 50-50 basis.
The accord includes a security protocol, while special arrangements will be in force in three disputed areas.
But the negotiations faced hurdles as soon as both sides occasionally walked out of sessions to protest military incursions on the ground.
The most notable setbacks were battles to control the southern towns of Torit and Kapoeta, while talks were under way in Kenya, in violation of a mutual agreement to stop fighting.
The peace deal does not cover a conflict in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, where tens of thousands of people and around 1.6 million others displaced by nearly two years of clashes opposing rebels to government troops and proxy militia.
Sumbeiywo said that it was through the will of God that two sides last Friday managed to finalise the details of the peace deal to end the conflict.
“It was reached by the will of God. I feel humbled that actually God chose me” to broker peace in this conflict, Sumbeiywo, a professed Christian, told AFP.
Several presidents and heads of government are expected to attend the signing of the final accord in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. US former president Jimmy Carter is also expected, according to the Kenyan foreign ministry.
The signature will definitively end war in southern Sudan, which erupted in September 1983 when the rebels rose up against Khartoum’s Arab and Muslim domination of the south.
The war and its effects have killed at least 1.5 million people and displaced four million others.