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NAIROBI, July 21: Sudanese government and rebel officials were set for further talks next month after achieving a breakthrough in the country’s long-running civil war with agreement on two key issues, negotiators said Sunday.
The two-pronged agreement sets out a timetable for the people of southern Sudan to vote in a referendum on separation and affirms the division of religion and state.
The deal was reached after five weeks of closed-door negotiations in Machakos, a small town southeast of Nairobi.
It falls short of a comprehensive peace deal and does not contain terms for a cease fire, which would be negotiated in a further round of negotiation scheduled for August, said Samson Kwaje, spokesman for the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (rebels).
“A deal has been reached on the two most difficult issues,” Kwaje told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. The two sides signed the protocols on Saturday at Kenya’s State House, the official residence of President Daniel arap Moi.
Southern Sudanese rebels have been at war with the government in Khartoum for all but nine of the last 47 years. The black African population of the south opposed what it sees as attempts by the Arab- dominated government of Khartoum to impose Islam and to exploit the south’s resources.
Under the terms of the agreement, an internationally-supervised referendum would take place six years after a comprehensive peace deal is signed and would offer southern Sudanese two clear choices: continuing as part of a united Sudan or forming a separate country.
The protocol on religion says that the government cannot impose Islamic law on the south, although it retains the right to do so in the north.
The Machakos talks marked the first time the government and the SPLA held face-to-face peace negotiations since last November when the US stepped up its involvement in trying to end the conflict by appointing John Danforth as special envoy.
The talks were sponsored by the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development and mediated by Kenyan General Lazaro Sumbeiwo.
PRESIDENT HAILS: Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir hailed the deal that could finally end two decades of civil war which have claimed 1.5 million lives and displaced an estimated four million people.
Saturday’s deal offers the mainly Christian and animist south six years of self-rule after which it can vote to secede, and also frees it during that time from the Islamic law imposed by the north.
Beshir said it was a “beginning for peace which will prevail in the country, God willing,” Khartoum’s Suna news agency quoted him saying after five weeks of talks with the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A).
Diplomats said both sides had been under pressure from Western powers, despite their deep mutual distrust, to end the conflict.
They said the peace blueprint offered a boost for Western oil firms wrestling with security problems and allegations that revenues are helping Khartoum’s war effort.
After seizing power in an Islamist-backed military coup 13 years ago, Beshir has embarked on reforms aimed at sparing the non-Muslim south from Sharia law. Though an Islamist, Beshir is viewed as a pragmatic leader seeking to end the nation’s diplomatic isolation — resulting from Washington’s charges it has sponsored international terrorism — and rescue its faltering economy. The issue of “wealth sharing” is viewed by diplomats as particularly thorny because much of Sudan’s daily oil output of an estimated 2505,000 barrels per day comes from the south of the country.
“The Americans in particular wanted to see Khartoum share some of the oil wealth with the south,” said Bill Farren-Price, an analyst with the Middle East Economic Survey in Cyprus.
Last year, the US House of Representatives passed a bill to bar oil companies with investments in Sudan from raising capital on US markets, but it has not become law following opposition from the White House.
A Western diplomat said “influences” had been brought to bear on SPLA leader Colonel John Garang to get him to back down from a demand for independence as a pre-condition for the talks.—dpa/AFP
