NAIROBI, 29 July 2004 — Sudan’s government and the main southern rebel group yesterday adjourned peace talks in Kenya without agreeing on a cease-fire deal crucial to ending Africa’s longest war, mediators said. “The talks have adjourned, but consultations with both sides will continue,” Lazaro Sumbeiywo, the Kenyan retired army general in charge of mediating the peace talks, told AFP.

An official in the mediation, who did not want to be named, said the ceasefire negotiations adjourned “without a deal, but mediators will continue shuttling between the Sudan’s government and Sudan People’s Liberation Army for consultations and to fix the date of resumption.”

The cease-fire talks, which opened on June 21, are mediated by East Africa’s regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD). Rebel spokesman Samson Kwaje told AFP that the two sides had agreed on “about 70 percent” of the whole cease-fire deal, but were stalled on funding of the two armies and positioning of the integrated forces after a final peace deal is signed.

“What is remaining is around 30 percent, and it is because we disagreed on details of funding the two armies, the SPLA and government’s, and whether or not the joint forces will be in eastern Sudan,” which lies in the north, Kwaje told AFP.

An earlier agreement on security arrangements in September 2003 broadly outlined how Khartoum would withdraw regular soldiers from southern Sudan and how troops from both sides would be integrated into a new army.

The deal did not explain how the separate forces are going to share cash from the national government. Active fighting died down in October 2002 when both sides signed a Cessation of Hostilities, but armed groups allied to both sides clashed in April in Upper Nile State, killing an unknown number of villagers and displacing at least 50,000 others, aid agencies said.

Sudan’s Vice President Ali Osman Taha and rebel chief John Garang, who directly negotiated from September 2003 to May this year, did not participate in the latest session of talks. Since July 2002, Khartoum and the SPLA have signed accords that provide for a six-year interim period of autonomy for the south, before the region holds a referendum on its political future.

The accords do not cover a separate conflict raging in western Sudan region of Darfur, which erupted in February 2003 when black African tribes rose up against the same government in the north, to fight marginalization.

Some 200 Sudanese women demonstrated in Khartoum yesterday, denying reports of mass rape in the Darfur region and protesting at the threat of UN sanctions or a military intervention to end the conflict. The rally, called by the women’s secretariat of the ruling National Congress party, together with the Women’s Media League and other professional women’s associations, marched from the foreign ministry to the offices of the United Nations, where protesters handed a petition to the UN representative.

Sudan has accused rebels in the Darfur region of killing 1,460 civilians since signing a cease-fire with the government in early April and of slowing delivery of aid to the region.