Sudan 's government and southern rebels vowed today to end Africa's longest civil war by December 31, signing a pledge in front of 15 UN Security Council envoys who flew in from New York to demand the fighting stop.
After the signing ceremony, the Security Council, meeting away from its Manhattan home for the first time in 14 years, unanimously adopted a resolution promising political and economic support once Sudan ended two wars that have left millions dead in the south and in Darfur in the West.
With the council's ambassadors as witnesses, the Sudanese government and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement signed a document promising to complete a final accord by December 31 to end 21 years of war in the oil-producing but impoverished south of Africa's biggest country.
Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Taha and southern rebel leader John Garang, the main peace negotiators for the two sides, have made similar pledges to complete an accord at least three times in the past year.
But this time they did it on paper before the Security Council, whose current president, US Ambassador John Danforth, acknowledged some believed the council had come to Kenya for two days to deliver grand words while people were dying.
"It's up to you to prove the naysayers and sceptics wrong," he told Taha and Garang at the council meeting. "The violence and atrocities being perpetrated must end now. You have heard this message clearly from the Security Council - heed it."
Sudan faces conflict on many fronts, mainly in the south where rebels have been fighting the government since 1983, when Khartoum tried to impose Islamic law on the entire country. But violence has also erupted in Darfur, triggering what the United Nations calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis.