Sudan Govt/SPLA Clear Hurdles to Peace Deal -Kenya

This is surely a breakthrough after several years of drag in peace negotiations between Sudanese government and the southern rebels. A long drawn war is over, peace will finally come between the two warring groups. But still this peace deal does not mention other ongoing crisis in Sudan, the hapless condition in Darfur where the allegations are abundant that the government of Sudan is engaged in its direct cooperation with the Janjaweed, the fierce Arab militias blamed to be massacring thousands of innocent African Sudanese, where close to a million Sudanese fled from their villages, more than hundred thousand fled to the neighboring Chad. International community must not abandon its pressure on the Sudanese government from achieving lasting peace in Darfur, holding accountable the Janjaweed militia and investigating if there are indeed elements of Sudanese military in the unlawful incursions in Darfur. Tortures and brutality should not be gone in impunity.

An article on this Darfur issue can be viewed in the following link: http://sohelkarim.blogspot.com/2004/05/mayhems-in-sudan-by-mahbubul-karim.html

Sudan's government and southern rebels have resolved final disputes in peace talks, clearing key hurdles blocking a comprehensive deal ending Africa's longest-running civil war, host Kenya said on Tuesday.

"This is a major breakthrough," a Kenyan foreign ministry public relations officer said, adding the Khartoum government and Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) rebels planned to sign several protocols at 6 a.m. EDT ceremony on Wednesday near Nairobi.

The agreements to be signed at the talks venue in Naivasha town will not cover a separate war which has raged for more than a year in Sudan's Darfur region, creating what the United Nations says is one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

The ministry public relations officer said the Khartoum government and SPLA had settled the status of three disputed areas -- the Nuba Mountains, Southern Blue Nile and Abyei -- and agreed how to share power once the 21-year-old conflict comes to an end.

The signings, to be followed at some stage by a final agreement on a cease-fire and implementation arrangements, would clear the way for the inking of a much-delayed peace deal to end a war that has killed an estimated two million people, mainly through famine and disease, and forced millions more to flee.

The war began in 1983 and broadly pits the SPLA in the mainly Christian and animist south against the northern Islamic government. The conflict has been complicated by issues of oil, ethnicity and religion.

The United States has a special interest in Sudan, which it lists as a "state sponsor of terrorism" based on Khartoum's record of protecting militant Islamists and hosting Osama bin Laden in the 1990s.

Washington hopes a deal will hand it a success story for U.S. diplomacy and transform relations with a country where oil output is rising.

A wealth sharing deal signed in January 2004 splits oil revenues equally during a six-year transition period and maps out a monetary system allowing for Islamic banking in the north and a western banking system in the south.

Sudan earns more than $2 billion a year from its growing oil output of about 300,000 barrels a day -- big riches for an impoverished country of 30 million that only began exporting petroleum in the late 1990s.

The combatants have also agreed on security arrangements including separate armies with integrated forces in strategic parts of the vast country.