NAIVASHA, Kenya, 7 September 2003 — Sudan’s Vice President Ali Osman Taha and southern rebel leader John Garang held talks for the third straight day here yesterday in a bid to revive the faltering peace process and end Africa’s oldest civil war.
Taha and Garang, leader of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), returned to the negotiating table at around 1:30 p.m. (1030 GMT) yesterday after meeting long into the night on Friday.
“Both sides have shown genuine willingness to resolve the problem in Sudan,” chief mediator Lazaro Sumbeiywo, a former Kenyan army general, told AFP in Naivasha, 80 km northwest of the Kenyan capital Nairobi.
“It seems they all understand that war cannot go on forever and that the peace process is irreversible,” added Sumbeiywo. He said the two sides, under pressure to reach a settlement, were addressing substantive issues in the conflict and were not just trying to revive the peace talks that stalled last month.
Khartoum and the SPLA struck a breakthrough accord in July 2002 which granted the south the right to self-determination after a six-year transition period and exempted the mainly Christian and animist region from Islamic laws practiced in Khartoum. Subsequent rounds of talks focused on how to share power and resources during the nterim period of self-rule for southern Sudan.
But Khartoum has rejected a draft final document.
Committed to Truce: Sudan’s army has said it is committed to a truce with rebels in the country’s western Darfur region which was due to come into force yesterday, a government-owned newspaper reported yesterday.
