SUDAN: Amid shrieks and whoops of celebration, Sudan's government and its rebel foes signed an accord yesterday on how to share the oil-exporting country's wealth when Africa's longest-running conflict comes to an end.
The accord provides a roughly equal division of oil revenues for Khartoum and a yet-to-be-created governing authority in the rebels' southern bastion.
It gives the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) of rebel leader Mr John Garang a role in negotiating and approving all oil contracts.
Africa's largest country earns about $2 billion a year from its growing oil output of more than 250,000 barrels a day, huge riches for an impoverished country of 30 million that only began petroleum exports in the late 1990s.
"We'll have a say in all affairs that affect the oil sector in general," Mr Garang told reporters, saying a commission created by the accord to manage the oil sector would be staffed by equal numbers of government and rebel officials.
The pact, reached on Monday after months of talks in Naivasha, Kenya, leaves two other topics to be settled before 20 years of civil war can be declared over - sharing power and the status of three contested areas.
"The Sudan peace process is now truly irreversible," Mr Garang said at a signing ceremony in the Kenyan town. He hoped to finalise a peace deal by the end of January.
Both the government - host to Osama bin Laden from 1991 to 1996 - and the rebels say they are committed to resolving remaining disputes.
The government also wants to shake off the "terrorist" tag attached to Sudan by the United States.
"This is an historic day in the process of peace," said Vice-President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha. "This moment, in which we have signed an agreement on wealth sharing, spells the end of a long episode of war and conflict in our country." Some two million have died, mainly from hunger and disease, in the conflict that broke out in 1983. Millions more have fled.
The war pits Khartoum's Islamist government against rebels in the mainly animist or Christian south. Disputes over oil, ethnicity and ideology have complicated the conflict.
The United States has played a leading role in exerting pressure on both sides to reach an agreement
- (Reuters)