NAIVASHA, 24 December 2003 — Sudan’s government and rebel foes have agreed in principle on how to share wealth when their civil war ends, Kenyan Foreign Minister Kalonzo Musyoka said yesterday, marking a key advance at peace talks. An accord would dismantle a big hurdle to ending Africa’s longest conflict in the continent’s biggest country — a 20-year-old civil war that has cost two million lives and uprooted four million people.
However, Musyoka told Reuters the parties, meeting in the Kenyan Rift Valley town of Naivasha, were unlikely to sign a separate accord on wealth and would instead work on through Christmas to clinch a more inclusive peace pact.
“The two leaders have agreed on wealth-sharing... It’s an agreement in principle,” he said, referring to rebel leader John Garang and the government’s first vice president Osman Ali Taha. “The two parties have decided not to sign piecemeal agreements. They will work through Christmas and sign (a more inclusive) agreement by the end of this year.”
Garang and Taha met in the afternoon to review developments but it was not immediately clear if they had examined the wording of a draft agreement on sharing the wealth of the oil-exporting country. Delegates had earlier said the two men would check the text to see if it met their final approval.
Despite the progress in the talks, the Sudanese government is still fighting two other rebel groups that launched an uprising in the western Darfur area in February. The rebels, who accuse the authorities of marginalizing the arid region, said government-armed militias and warplanes had killed at least 24 people over the past four days.
Rebels from Darfur said yesterday government-armed militias and warplanes killed at least 24 people over the past four days, forcing civilians to flee to rebel camps and mountain caves in the arid region. The Justice and Equality Movement, one of two main rebel groups that launched a revolt in the Darfur area in February, said two Antonov planes bombed two villages on Monday. Government officials were not immediately available.
“Eighteen people were killed and 25 wounded. Two villages were destroyed and the civilians left the dead unburied and fled to the mountains,” JEM general coordinator Abu Bakr Hamid Al-Nur told Reuters by telephone. Nur said the bombing took place in the Jabel Moon area in Western Darfur state near the Chadian border, where authorities have imposed a curfew.
