[Shadow_Group] Sudan, Rebel Leaders Sign Peace Agreement

[shadowgroup-l at lists.resist.ca]

Sudan, Rebel Leaders Sign Peace Agreement

By Chris Tomlinson
The Associated Press
Friday, November 19, 2004; 1:35 PM 

FROM:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62607-2004Nov19.html<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62607-2004Nov19.html>
NAIROBI, Kenya -- The Sudanese government and southern
rebel leaders pledged again Friday to end a 21-year
civil war -- this time making the commitment before
the U.N. Security Council holding a special meeting in
Africa. 

U.N. officials hope the promise to reach an accord by
year's end will also help quell a separate ethnic
conflict in Sudan's western Darfur region, but warned
against unwarranted optimism. 

"We are very close to peace, but we have been close
before," said John Danforth, who was Washington's
special envoy to Sudan before becoming U.S. ambassador
to the United Nations. "Do not let this opportunity
slip away," he told the Sudanese negotiators. 

In 48 years of independence, Africa's biggest country
has spent 39 years at war with itself. And both the
south and west have long histories of internal
conflict even before independence. 

International attention has focused on three major
rebel groups -- one in the south and two in Darfur --
but there are more than a dozen militia leaders who
constantly shift alliances. 

Cementing a full peace will require negotiations with
all those militias, which have been responsible for
most violations of an informal cease-fire that has
largely held for two years in the south. 

The southern war has pitted Sudan's Islamic-dominated
government against rebels seeking greater autonomy and
a greater share of the country's wealth for the
Christian and animist south. The conflict is blamed
for more than 2 million deaths, primarily from
war-induced famine and disease. 

Both sides have already agreed on power and wealth
sharing and how to integrate their armed forces. All
that remains is how to implement the agreements -- for
example, who will pay the rebel soldiers until they
join the government forces and whether or not money
distributed to the south will be in local or foreign
currency. 

The negotiators have promised to meet deadlines
before, including a pledge to Secretary of State Colin
Powell to reach a final agreement by last Dec. 31.
They have missed two further deadlines since then. 

"We are keen, we are fully committed, to give the
people of Sudan and to give Africa and the whole
international community the gift of an agreement for
the end of the year," Sudanese Vice President Ali
Osman Taha told the Security Council. 

John Garang, leader of the Sudan People's Liberation
Army, the biggest southern rebel group, welcomed a
resolution the council passed Friday demanding that
the two sides sign a final agreement by Dec. 31. "We
will do our best to fulfill our commitment," he said. 

But as the government and the southern rebels have
come closer to forming a new government, other
insurgencies have emerged, complicating efforts for
nationwide peace. 

Renewed fighting in Darfur erupted in February 2003,
when two non-Arab rebel groups took up arms contending
Sudan's leaders leaned toward Arab tribes in disputes
over the region's water and land. The government
responded by backing Arab militias, which have been
accused of targeting non-Arab civilians in a campaign
of murder, rape and arson. 

President Bush's administration believes the militias
have committed genocide, Danforth said. 

The Darfur conflict has driven 1.8 million people from
their homes. At least 70,000 people, mostly civilians,
have died since March because of disease, hunger and
hardships from being uprooted. Many more have been
killed in fighting, but no firm estimate exists. 

The Security Council came to Nairobi this week to
pressure the Sudanese government and the southern
rebels to finalize their deal. 

The council also used the extraordinary meeting --
only the fourth outside New York since 1952 -- to
highlight the deteriorating situation in Darfur and
demand an immediate end to violence there. 

There was near consensus that settling the southern
war would make it easier to bring peace to Darfur,
because a new power-sharing government would include
southern rebels who are sympathetic to the western
region's rebels. 

But human rights groups and aid agencies wanted the
council to take stronger action on that conflict,
complaining that a new national government would take
months to start work, leaving the people of Darfur in
limbo. 

"From New York to Nairobi, a trail of weak resolutions
on Darfur has led nowhere," said Caroline Nursey of
Oxfam International.



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