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| East/Subsaharan Africa |
| Sudan says it will resume peace talks once rebels stop attacks |
| 2002-09-09 |
| Khartoum will only resume peace talks with southern rebels if they halt attacks and withdraw a demand to renegotiate some issues settled in a provisional peace deal signed in July. Talks that were broken off when rebels seized a government stronghold more than a week ago could not resume as long as there was fighting and previous agreements were ignored, First Vice President Ali Osman Taha told the official Al-Anbaa daily. "Negotiation is meaningless so long as the war is going on," Taha said. "We won't negotiate with you anymore until you stop beating us up..." A peace blueprint reached in Machakos, Kenya in July had raised hopes that Sudan could finally end a 19-year civil war between the Arab and Muslim-dominated north and the mainly Christian and animist south. Under the deal, southern Sudan will enjoy six years of self-rule, free from the Islamic law applied in Khartoum and elsewhere in the north, and will then decide in a referendum if it wishes to remain part of Sudan or secede. That was the part that gave Egypt and the North the willies... But the government withdrew from talks on September 2 that aimed to turn the plan into reality after the rebels of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) captured the garrison town of Torit in Eastern Equatoria State. "A return to the negotiation table will be made only under a clear commitment to cessation of hostilities and refraining from raising or retracting what was agreed upon in the first round of the Machakos talks," Taha said. There's not a lot of good faith on either side, is there? He was referring to SPLA demands to make Khartoum a secular city as well as redefine the southern Sudanese boundaries to include the Nuba Mountains and southern Blue Nile, considered areas rich with oil reserves. Since the idea is for the North to get enough peace and stability to lay hands on all that oil money, that might be a stopper... Taha has appealed to the mediators to make of the negotiations "a genuine peace forum rather than an amusing play ... There should either be serious negotiations or no negotiations at all." Right now it looks like no negotiations at all... Taha wondered why a ceasefire similar to one brokered by the United States in the south-central Nuba Mountains that went into effect last January could not be agreed upon in southern Sudan. Prob'ly because everyone's busy trying to figure out who shot whom. It was the government forces that attacked in the south on the day the treaty was being signed... The government opts for peace but "has declared a mobilisation because the rebel movement has opted for war," said Taha, adding the government "is determined to retake Torit." |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |