SUDAN: Sudan's government and rebel foes have agreed in principle on how to share wealth when their civil war ends, Kenyan Foreign Minister Mr Kalonzo Musyoka said yesterday, marking a key advance at peace talks.
An accord would dismantle a big hurdle to ending Africa's longest conflict in the continent's biggest country - a 20-year-old civil war that has cost two million lives and uprooted four million people.
However, Mr Musyoka said the parties, meeting in the Kenyan town of Naivasha, were unlikely to sign a separate accord on wealth and would instead work on through Christmas to clinch a more inclusive peace pact.
"The two leaders have agreed on wealth sharing . . . It's an agreement in principle," he said, referring to rebel leader Mr John Garang and the government's first vice-president Mr Osman Ali Taha. "The two parties have decided not to sign piecemeal agreements. They will work through Christmas and sign [a more inclusive\] agreement by the end of this year."
War broke out in Sudan in 1983, between the Islamic government in the Arab-speaking north and rebels seeking more autonomy for the largely animist or Christian south. Oil, ideology, ethnicity and religion have complicated it.
The government and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) agreed last year to a waiver on Islamic law in non-Muslim areas and a six-year transitional period from January 2004 after which the south would vote on whether to secede.
Mr Garang and Mr Taha met in the afternoon to review developments but it was not immediately clear if they had examined the wording of a draft agreement on sharing the wealth of the oil-exporting country.
The men agreed in principle at the weekend on taking an equal share of oil revenues, but Mr Musyoka's announcement suggested they had also reached preliminary agreement on sharing taxes, the central bank's role and questions about the currency. The oil deal was a major concession by the government, which had wanted only 5 per cent of oil revenues to go the SPLA. - (Reuters)