Resumption of Sudan peace talks delayed as Khartoum slams draft accord
NAIROBI, Aug 10 (AFP) — The resumption of peace talks Sunday between the Sudanese government and southern rebels was delayed because a chief mediator was unable to attend, leaving a host of questions after President Omar al-Beshir blasted the proposed peace deal as “unfair”.
Mediator Lazaro Sumbeiywo, a retired Kenyan army general, told AFP that he was unable to travel to the venue at Nanyuki, near Mount Kenya, after his daughter was injured in a road accident.
“I have informed both delegations and IGAD (the east African negotiating body) I could not go to Nanyuki today,” said Sumbeiywo.
Sumebiywo is the chairman of a team of mediators from the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), which groups Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Uganda and, nominally, Somalia.
He said the talks between a delegation from Khartoum and representatives from the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) would resume on Monday.
The talks were scheduled to restart despite acrimonious exchanges between the Khartoum government and the SPLA over a draft final accord.
President Beshir told an Egyption government daily in comment published Sunday that he would not sign an “unfair” peace agreement with the rebels and voiced “doubts” about the intentions of their leader, John Garang.
In an interview with Al-Ahram newspaper, Beshir said Khartoum would resort to other “options”, without specifying what those would be, should “deadlock” persist.
“We are not going to sign any peace agreement that does not implement justice,” Beshir was quoted as saying.
On Saturday, the president slammed the draft accord, put forward by IGAD, as “aimed at dismantling not only the present regime but the whole of Sudan.”
The last round of talks in Nakuru, Kenya broke down in July when the government rejected a draft accord on outstanding issues such as power- and wealth-sharing and security arrangements during a six-year transition period, which would grant southern Sudan a separate army and independent central bank.
On Friday, the SPLA, which has been fighting since 1983 to end domination of Sudan’s mainly Christian and animist south by the Arab Muslim government in Khartoum, rejected a government demand that the draft accord be modified.
Khartoum said the draft was a prelude to a secession of southern Sudan with a separate army and independent central bank during the 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.
But Khartoum and the rebels are wrangling on how power will be shared during the interim period between the country’s president and a vice president expected to come from the rebel-controlled south, according to a source close to the negotiations.
The government is also reluctant to suspend Islamic law in the capital Khartoum during the transition period, when mediators had proposed that the city serve as the joint capital.
On wealth-sharing, the bone of contention is mainly on how to apportion oil revenues and the ownership of land and other natural resources, according to the source, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity.
Khartoum has also rejected a proposal that both the government and the SPLA maintain separate armies during the transition period.
The government has also refused to discuss the issue of the three disputed areas of southern Blue Nile State, Abyei, and the Nuba Mountains in the centre of the country, where rebels are active although the areas are not geographically part of the south, according to the source.
The SPLA claims that it has the mandate from the three territories to represent them at the talks, but Khartoum, for its part, says that it controls 90 percent of those areas.
The Sudanese civil war, the oldest in Africa, has claimed at least 1.5 million lives and displaced four million people.