SUDAN: The Sudanese government and southern rebels announced yesterday they would finalise their protracted negotiations and secure peace in Africa's longest running civil war.
However human rights groups said thousands more people faced abuses in the weeks leading up to a deal, which is not expected to be finalised until December 31st.
Ceasefires have been broken and deadlines missed during two years of peace talks.
Rebel and government leaders said they were committed to a settlement during a high-profile meeting of the United Nations Security Council in Nairobi, only the fourth time the Council has met outside New York.
Ms Minky Worden, spokeswoman for Human Rights Watch, said the UN faced a huge test of credibility.
She warned similar breakthroughs had turned out to be illusory and that action, not words, were now needed to help thousands of people at risk of human rights abuses.
"If there is an agreement, will the government adhere to it and, in the meantime, when will relief get to the people of Darfur? Every minute there are human rights abuses happening and at the moment we are getting nowhere," she said.
Earlier Mr John Garang, head of the Southern People's Liberation Movement, said there was no obstacle to signing the accord by the end of the year.
"Peace has a price and we are prepared to pay that price," he told the Council.
Although Mr Ali Osman Taha, Sudan's vice president, declined to agree a deadline, he is expected to sign a memorandum of understanding today, specifying a December 31st target.
The two sides have signed six preliminary deals for power sharing, integrating the military and dividing oil revenues, without a final outcome.
More than 2 million people have died during the 21-year war in the oil-rich south, where rebels are fighting what they see as an Arab-dominated northern government.
The World Food Programme also announced yesterday that 1.8 million of the 7.5 million people living in rebel controlled areas will need food aid in the months ahead. Poor rains and conflict are to blame, it said, for halving food production in some areas.
Although the conflict in Darfur, did not figure in the first day of the two-day meeting on Sudan, Mr Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, said a quick end to conflict in the south would help bring peace elsewhere.
"The effects of delay are felt not only in the south but elsewhere too, as conflict spreads to more parts of the country," he said.
"The devastating conflict in Darfur is glaring evidence of this." He added that the security council could still take punitive action against both sides in Sudan, but that he hoped the carrot of a peace dividend would keep the talks on track.
Today, the Security Council is expected to adopt a resolution encouraging the European Union, the World Bank and the UN to develop a blueprint for rebuilding the country once a north-south peace deal is completed.