Amid singing and cries of joy, Sudan’s government and southern rebels signed the final chapters of a peace deal on Friday, paving the way for a comprehensive accord ending Africa’s longest-running civil war.
Delegates from the government and rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) signed the last two of eight peace protocols that together make up an overall accord ending 21 years of war in the oil-producing south, witnesses said.
“The war in the south is over,” Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir told a ceremony in the Kenyan town of Naivasha that was also attended by South African President Thabo Mbeki.
“Our happiness will not be complete unless we solve the problem of Darfur,” Bashir added, referring to a separate and worsening war in the western region of Africa’s biggest country.
Mediators said a ceremony had tentatively been set for January 9 in Nairobi where both principal negotiators -- SPLM leader John Garang and Sudanese First Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha -- are due to sign the eight deals agreed by their staff in two years of talks.
In the capital Khartoum, southern Sudanese thronged one of the main streets where a screen had been erected to show live televised pictures of the signing. Some held placards with the name of the SPLM, others chanted “New Sudan” or “John Garang.” “I am so happy with signing of peace. We expect Sudan will become better. Now, Sudanese have the right to live in any place they want inside Sudan,” said Tom Okween, a 38-year-old hotel worker, who like many others had come to work in the capital.
Ahmed Abdel-Hamid Awad, a 33-year-old journalist from the north, was also enjoying the moment. “Maybe the Naivasha agreement will be the beginning of the solution in Darfur and in the rest of the regions of Sudan,” he said.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan welcomed the accord and said the official signing of the peace deal would “...usher in a new era of peace in Sudan, in which the United Nations is prepared to play a significant role,” chief U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said in New York.
Crisis in Darfur
The accords do not cover the conflict in Darfur, where more than a year of fighting has created what the United Nations says is one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. But diplomats believe a north-south deal could be a blueprint for peace in Darfur.
The combatants pledged in November to sign a final peace by the end of the year to end the conflict in the south that has killed an estimated two million people, mainly through famine and disease, and uprooted four million.
Khartoum has already signed six preliminary protocols with the southern rebels under which they would form a coalition government, decentralise power, share oil revenues and integrate the military. In six years the south can vote for secession.
In the mainly animist and Christian south rebels have been fighting the government since 1983, when Khartoum tried to impose Islamic law on the entire country. Issues of oil, ethnicity and governance have complicated the conflict.
The United States and others have put strong diplomatic pressure on Sudan to wrap up the southern peace, so that Khartoum can focus on ending the separate crisis in Darfur.
“It will change the political landscape in Khartoum. I think it will create a new opportunity to tackle the Darfur problem, and that is what we are hoping will come out of this,” U.S. Ambassador to Kenya William Bellamy told Reuters.
The Dutch European Union presidency welcomed the agreement and pledged EU help in reconstruction, provided the two sides carried out their commitment to bring peace and development to “all regions of Sudan, including in Darfur.”
A leader of one of Darfur’s rebel groups said that only fair deals for all the marginalised people of Sudan would bring the country lasting peace.
“The agreement that is being signed today is partial agreement,” Sudan Liberation Army chairman Abdel Wahed Mohamed al-Nur told Reuters by telephone from Darfur. “We in the SLA inform the government and SPLM clearly that this may be a step but is in no way a solution to the problem of Sudan.”