NAIROBI, 21 December 2003 — Representatives of Sudan’s government and those of main rebel group have reached an agreement on the sharing of oil wealth, paving the way for a comprehensive peace accord, Kenya’s Foreign Minister Kalonzo Musyoka said yesterday.

“I am getting information that they have agreed on wealth-sharing,” Musyoka told AFP, commenting on the talks between Sudan’s government and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army being held outside the Kenyan capital.

He said that he would travel Sunday to Naivasha, 80 kilometers northwest of Nairobi, for the expected signing of the agreement. “There has been agreement on the wealth-sharing, but the principals are working on the final details,” an SPLA delegate to the talks, who asked not to be named, told AFP.

Asked to confirm that a deal on wealth-sharing had in fact been reached, chief mediator Lazaro Sumbeiywo, a retired Kenyan Army general said: “They are still drafting”. Sumbeiywo is the chairman of a team of mediators from the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, which groups Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Uganda and, nominally, Somalia.

The delegations at the talks are being led by Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Taha and SPLA leader John Garang. As well as wealth-sharing, the agenda of the current round of the talks that started on Dec. 5 also covers power-sharing and the status of three disputed regions in central Sudan.

Meanwhile, a Paris-based media rights group has condemned the Sudanese authorities for closing the offices of Arabic television channel Al-Jazeera and urged the government to stop censoring the network’s Sudan coverage.

Sudan’s internal security agency said on Friday it had shut Al-Jazeera’s office in the Sudanese capital and detained a senior staff member, accusing the channel of biased reporting. Al-Jazeera has denied bias and defended its arrested journalist. “We call on the security services to authorize the immediate reopening of Al-Jazeera’s bureau in Khartoum and to stop censoring this TV network by preventing it from carrying news about Sudan,” Reporters Without Borders Secretary-General Robert Menard said in a statement received late on Friday.

Al-Jazeera said on Wednesday that Sudanese police had stormed its office and seized broadcasting equipment, apparently in reaction to the popular channel’s coverage of Sudanese affairs.

But Sudanese officials denied police had raided the offices, saying customs officials had been there and taken a device as a “regular” procedure to check registration. “The confiscation was clearly motivated by displeasure with Al-Jazeera’s coverage of Sudan,” the rights group said in its statement. Al-Jazeera, which is widely watched in the Arab world, has in the past upset many Arab governments with its reporting. It also drew criticism in Britain and the United States over its coverage of the war in Iraq.