SUDAN: Africa's longest-running war officially ended yesterday when Sudan's government and southern rebels signed a peace deal, the climax to eight years of negotiations.
Celebrations were held across Sudan after the vice-president, Mr Ali Osman Muhammad Taha, and Mr John Garang, chairman of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), signed the accord.
If the deal holds, a 21-year conflict which claimed two million lives, displaced four million and devastated the south will be consigned to history.
Although the accord does not cover a separate, newer conflict in the western region of Darfur, analysts hoped it would boost efforts to end that crisis.
The north-south war pitted the Islamist regime in Khartoum against rebels seeking greater autonomy for the mainly Christian, animist and oil-rich south.
Both sides agreed to share power and natural wealth during a six-year transition period, after which southerners will vote in a referendum on whether to remain united with the north or secede.
Hundreds of prisoners of war are due to be released within days.
The accord was signed at a sports stadium in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, under the gaze of US Secretary of State Mr Colin Powell, two European ministers and 12 African heads of state and government.
Thousands of Sudanese refugees and exiles who also attended cheered and sang, and some plotted their return home.
"If I had wings I would be flying," said Grace Datiro (35), a southerner who fled to Kenya 14 years ago.
Across southern Sudan thousands marched to ritually cleanse their streets of war, but amid the talk of a new dawn there was also anxiety that fighting could resume.
Mr Powell echoed that caution. "This is a promising day for the people of Sudan, but only if today's promises are kept," he said.
Under the accord the ruling National Congress party and the SPLM will form an interim coalition government, decentralise power, share oil revenues and integrate the military.
The Khartoum and rebel parliaments must ratify the accord within a fortnight, after which Mr Garang will be appointed first vice-president and sit in cabinet with his former opponent President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.
Both men talked up the accord as a historic breakthrough, but Mr Garang warned that the south would grow restless without aid and investment from the north.
Khartoum is gambling that the SPLM will be brought into its fold and the risk of secession neutralised, but if southerners vote for independence in a referendum Sudan faces redrawing its colonial boundaries - a taboo in Africa.
Attention will now switch to Darfur, where the government is accused of waging a brutal offensive against insurgents.
The UN has called it one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.