Uganda praises final peace deal between Sudan govt, southern rebels

KAMPALA, Jan 4, 2005 (Xinhua) — Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni Tuesday sent a special message of congratulations to the people of the Sudan upon the final peace agreement between the government of the Sudan and the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) rebels in the south.

According to a press release issued here by the Ugandan State House, President Museveni passed on his congratulations through the Sudanese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Mustafa Osman Esmail who delivered a special message to him from Sudan’s President Omar el-Bashir Tuesday in southern Uganda.

Museveni described the Dec. 31, 2004 agreement signed in Naivasha, Kenya as historic.

“As neighbors and brothers, this is the best we have had from the Sudan,” he said, adding peace in the Sudan will have a great impact on Uganda and the rest of Africa.

In his message delivered by Osman Esmail, President el-Bashir thanked President Museveni for his enormous contribution to the settlement between the Sudanese government and the SPLA, saying the turning point for peace in southern Sudan was the meeting between himself and SPLA’s Col. John Garang in 2002 in Kampala.

Last Friday, the Sudanese government and the SPLA signed an agreement on permanent ceasefire and the implementation modalities of the final peace deal in Naivasha, Kenya.

The Sudanese civil war started in 1983 when the SPLA took up arms fighting for self-determination in the southern part of the country, which has left some two million people dead, mostly through war-induced famine and disease.