NAIROBI, 13 July 2003 — A sixth round of talks aimed at ending a 20-year war between Sudan’s government and southern-based rebels ended yesterday with the two sides failing to agree on a draft peace accord, a spokesman for the rebel group said.
“We have just closed without any agreement,” Samson Kwaje, spokesman for the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), said by telephone from the western Kenyan town of Nakuru where the latest round of talks had been held since July 6.
“The government rejected the draft proposals that would have formed the basis of an agreement,” said Kwaje.
The proposals for a final settlement were drawn up by mediators of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), which groups the east African states of Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Uganda and nominally Somalia.
A government statement received by AFP in Khartoum dismissed the proposals as “unbalanced and inconsistent” with previous peace agreements.
The proposals concern power- and wealth-sharing as well as security arrangements during an envisaged six-year period of autonomy for the south before a referendum is held to determine whether or not it remains part of Sudan.
Kwaje said one of the bones of contention was the government’s refusal to suspend Islamic law in the capital Khartoum during the transition period when mediators had proposed that the city serve as the joint capital.
The government also rejected a proposal to carve out an area out of Khartoum and designate it the joint capital, he added.
Khartoum also described the draft accord as “unapplicable and unsustainable” and urged IGAD mediators to “come up with a more balanced and workable formulation in future rounds” of peace talks.
Meanwhile, 13 Sudanese soldiers and a total of 30 rebels and armed robbers were killed when the Sudanese Army repulsed a rebel attack on a town in western Sudan bordering Chad, state Radio Omdurman said yesterday.
Fighting first flared up in Darfur, a new flash point in the west of Africa’s largest country, in February.
