NAIROBI/WASHINGTON, 25 June 2004 — The resumption of a final round of peace talks between the Khartoum government and main southern rebel group, which was due today has been postponed for two days, the chief mediator said yesterday.
“Both parties have requested that the opening of the final round be postponed to Sunday,” Lazaro Sumbeiywo, the retired Kenyan general, said. Khartoum and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) are currently meeting in Kenya to discuss the finer details of their nation’s post-war military landscape.
“They said that they want more time for consultations,” Sumbeiywo added. A final round of negotiations is expected to cover details of a comprehensive cease-fire and how to implement various deals signed since July 2002, before clinching a definitive peace agreement to end to 21 years of devastating civil war. The war in Sudan erupted when southern-based rebels rose up against Khartoum, ostensibly to end Arab and Muslim domination and marginalization of the black, animist and Christian south.
Together with famine and disease, the conflict has killed at least 1.5 million people and displaced another four million.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Colin Powell will travel to Sudan next week to press Khartoum on ending the crisis in the strife-torn western region of Darfur by disarming pro-government militias and easing humanitarian access, the State Department said yesterday.
Powell will stop in Khartoum and Darfur after accompanying President George W. Bush to the NATO summit in Istanbul and while en route to a Southeast Asian regional security meeting in Jakarta, spokesman Richard Boucher said.
Sudan is currently designated a “state sponsor of terrorism” by Washington and Boucher said Bush had personally signed off on Powell’s trip. Powell will be the highest-level US official to visit Sudan since 1978 when former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance made a brief stop there.
Powell’s visit, set for June 29 and 30, will take place amid massive US and international pressure on Sudan to rein in pro-government militias accused of conducting an ethnic cleansing campaign in Darfur and calls for Khartoum to ease aid access to the region to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe.
“The secretary’s visit to Sudan is intended to continue to call attention to the dire humanitarian situation in Darfur, to do whatever we can to stop the violence there, and to make sure that the needy people of that region are receiving whatever supplies we can get to them,” Boucher said.
Despite the blunt message Powell will be delivering, Boucher told reporters that Sudanese authorities had said they would “welcome” the secretary’s visit, which will coincide with a trip to Sudan by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
In addition to developments in Darfur, Powell will likely push for Khartoum and southern rebels — who have been engaged in a devastating 21-year war — to ink a peace accord reached in principle last month in talks in Kenya.
“We are very pleased to see the government and the (southern) rebels reach agreement,” Boucher said. “At the same time, the humanitarian crisis of Darfur has been of enormous importance to us. “Just as we are pleased to see peace (in the south), we are equally displeased to see what’s been taking place in Darfur,” he said.
