YEI, Sudan, 9 June 2004 — Sudan’s main rebel leader John Garang yesterday began a tour of the south of his divided country to explain a series of accords his movement has signed with Khartoum to end a devastating war ignited in 1983.
“I am going to brief the people now,” the leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army told journalists accompanying him.
In Nairobi on Saturday, Garang and Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Taha signed a declaration recommitting themselves to a series of peace protocols struck over the previous two years and officially launched a final round of talks on technical aspects of a comprehensive and permanent cease-fire and on how to apply the protocols.
The declaration encapsulated deals struck over the course of two years of talks on issues such as power- and wealth-sharing and the establishment of a six-year interim period of autonomy for south Sudan.
“We have peace in hand,” Garang said Tuesday, adding that he had also come to “thank the people for the sacrifices they made in the past 21 years.”
Since the start of the war, which essentially pitted the governments in Khartoum against a South where traditional religions and Christianity are practiced, with natural resources such as oil fueling the conflict, some 1.5 million people have been killed and development brought to a standstill.
Garang was greeted on arrival by several thousand people in the streets of Yei, close to the border with Democratic Republic of Congo.
Garang said his movement was not involved in a separate conflict in the west Sudan region of Darfur, where Khartoum’s response to a rebel uprising in 2003 has been blamed for massive human rights abuses amid fears that hundreds of thousands of people face starvation because farmers have been able to plant their crops.
“Darfur is important to us. We don’t want anybody in any part of our country to die,” the SPLA leader said. “We want peace. The war in Darfur cannot be resolved militarily. We are ready to help to bring a fair political situation,” he added.
