KHARTOUM, 6 April 2004 — A deal to end more than two decades of civil war in southern Sudan is very close, Sudanese President Omar Hassan Bashir said in a speech prepared for yesterday. Talks between the Islamist government in Khartoum and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in Naivasha, Kenya, have stalled in recent weeks over the status of the Abyei area, claimed by both sides.
But Bashir, in an address to the Sudanese Parliament, said a final agreement would be signed soon, although he did not give any date. “The talks have progressed a lot and the stage of signing the final and comprehensive agreement is very close,” he said, according to a text of his speech obtained by Reuters.
“Whatever the obstacles or hindrances in the negotiations, there is a determination to overcome them with calmness and confidence and to pursue the process to the end,” he said. In March, the United States tabled a fresh proposal saying Abyei would belong to both the north and south, with the region’s oil revenues split 50-42 percent to Khartoum and the SPLM, respectively. The remainder would go to local tribes.
Meanwhile, a Sudanese official said yesterday that a group of mainly Sudanese air force officers showed reluctance to follow orders to carry out aerial bombardments before their arrests for plotting against the state. Presidential adviser Qutbi Mahdi did not say where the officers had been ordered to bomb, but witnesses have said government planes have in recent weeks raided several civilian areas in Sudan’s war-torn western region of Darfur.
A senior military official previously said the group, now numbering 11 after another colonel was arrested on Sunday, mainly came from Darfur. He also said they received funds from rebels in the remote west of Africa’s largest country.
