Sudan government puts conditions on peace talks resumption

CAIRO, Aug 7 (AFP) — Sudan will not resume peace talks with southern rebels unless the mediating African body modifies a draft accord, the Sudanese foreign minister said Thursday.

“Peace talks will resume if the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) takes a new initiative providing for reasonable arrangements in the interim period,” the minister, Mustafa Ismail, told Egyptian government daily Al-Ahram in an interview.

“If not, or if the (new) initiative is not acceptable, the meeting due Suday in (the Kenyan town of) Nakuru will not happen,” he said. “Next Sunday will be a decisive day.”

In the last round of talks with the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), in July, the government rejected an IGAD draft on outstanding issues such as power- and wealth-sharing and security arrangements during a six-year transition period agreed last year.

Khartoum said the draft was a prelude to a secession of southern Sudan with a separate army and independent central bank during interim phase.

In the Kenyan town of Machakos in July last year, Khartoum and the SPLA struck a breakthrough accord granting the south the right to self-determination after a six-year transition period and exempting the south from Islamic laws.

IGAD comprises the east African states of Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Uganda and, nominally, Somalia.

The SPLA has been fighting since 1983 to end domination of the mainly Christian and animist south by the Arab Muslim government in Khartoum.

The conflict, the oldest in Africa, has claimed at least 1.5 million lives and displaced four million people since 1983.