KHARTOUM, 3 May 2005 — A Sudanese opposition alliance, which grouped outlawed northern political parties with southern rebels during the 1990s, is close to signing a peace deal with Khartoum matching that signed by the rebels in January, a spokesman said yesterday.
The National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which has suffered a string of defections in recent years, is to resume Egyptian-sponsored talks with the government on Saturday in the hope of inking an agreement the following Tuesday, spokesman Ali Ahmed Al-Sayyed told AFP. “It has been provisionally agreed that the negotiations will begin in Cairo on around May 7 (next Saturday) and if everything goes on schedule, the agreement will be signed on May 10,” spokesman Ali Ahmed Al-Sayyed told AFP.
The spokesman said that outstanding issues included the fate of the military wings which some northern opposition groups set up in exile in neighboring Eritrea in the mid-1990s.
The two sides hoped the final round of negotiations would “resolve all outstanding issues between the two sides, including the status of the NDA military forces, through joint committees to be set up during the meeting,” said Sayyed.
Signature of a peace deal would open the way for the NDA and its constituent parties to join a constitutional convention under way in Khartoum, which is charged with writing a new charter to govern the six-year run-up to a promised referendum on independence for the mainly Christian and animist south.
