US could punish Sudan, rebels if peace talks fail: US expert

KHARTOUM, Aug 18 (AFP) — The United States could punish Sudan’s government and southern rebels if they fail to reach a peace agreement by an October deadline, an international expert close to the talks warned in remarks published Monday.

“The international community will not keep silent … and the party responsible for the failure will face grave consequences,” John Prendergast, co-director of the Africa Programme of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think-tank, told the independent Al-Sahafa daily.

Prendergast, a former Africa policy analyst with the administration of former US president Bill Clinton, said Washington could slap sanctions on the government if the talks collapse.

Under the Sudan Peace Act, implemented in October 2002, the United States can seek a UN Security Council resolution for an arms embargo on the Sudanese government and restrict its access to credit and oil revenues if the government is found to have obstructed a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

Prendergast, who was in Khartoum to meet with government officials in an effort to rescue the talks, also said Washington could cut its ties with the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) “and will impose punishments on it” if it scuppers the negotiations.

He met with SPLA officials in Nairobi before arriving here.

The peace talks, which are taking place in Kenya, reached a stalemate Friday after Khartoum refused to negotiate on the basis of a framework document drawn up by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the east African regional body mediating them.

The government delegation maintains that the document should not be referred to in the talks. But the SPLA insists that the IGAD-approved text must be the basis for attempts to reach a settlement ending Sudan’s 20-year civil war.

Khartoum and the SPLA struck a breakthrough accord in July 2002 granting the south the right to self-determination after a six-year transition period and exempting it from Islamic law.

But Khartoum and the rebels are still wrangling over power-sharing and security arrangements, and the distribution of wealth during the interim period.

Prendergast also said the United States blamed the Sudanese government for the “humanitarian catastrophe resulting from the war,” which he said cost the United States “a billion dollars a year” in aid.

Washington has set October as a deadline for progress in the peace talks before it imposes sanctions on the Sudanese government.

The expert added that if the talks fail, mediators would impose their own draft agreement and force the sides to accept it.

“The mediators, if a final agreement is not struck out by the two parties, will draw up a document by themselves and place it before the two parties saying: ‘take it or leave it,'” he said.

Sudan’s civil war between the Arab Muslim north and the mainly Christian and animist south is the oldest armed conflict in Africa. It has claimed at least 1.5 million lives and displaced four million people.

Separately, an official the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which groups north and south Sudanese opposition movements, said that his coalition could “resort to force” if it is excluded from any peace agreement between the government and the SPLA.

“I think if the result of an accord between the government and the SPLA does not take into account the hopes and objectives of the NDA, then this option exists,” said Abdel Aziz Khaled in an interview with the Arab-language daily Alsharq al-Awsat published on Monday.

The NDA seeks a resolution to the Sudanese civil war that would include all warring factions.