NAIROBI, 6 January 2005 — The leader of the main rebel movement in Sudan, due on Sunday to sign a final peace deal with the Khartoum government, will become the country’s top vice president next month, a rebel spokesman said.
Sudan People’s Liberation Movement Army (SPLM A) leader “John Garang will be sworn in immediately after Feb. 20,” rebel spokesman Samson Kwaje told AFP in Nairobi yesterday.
He was citing the details of a protocol, signed last Friday between SPLA and the Sudanese government, on the implementation of the final peace deal.
According to the power-sharing deal agreed in May, the leader of SPLM A will occupy the vice presidency up to the end of the third year, when general elections will be held all over the country.
The Sudanese first vice presidency is currently occupied by Ali Osman Taha, who had been negotiating face-to-face with Garang, since September 2003. Sudan has posts of first and second vice presidents.
The fate of Taha is still unclear, so does the holder of the next second vice president is still unknown.
Sudan’s President Omar Bashir and Garang will sign the final peace deal on Sunday in the Kenyan capital, before several African presidents and heads of government.
“The first thing after signing will be passing of an interim constitution,” Lazaro Sumbeiywo, a Kenyan army general mediating the peace talks, told AFP in Nairobi yesterday.
According to the deal signed last week, an interim constitution must be passed by the end of sixth week from when a final agreement is signed on Sunday.
Also on Sunday, the first 50 percent of the oil revenue is expected to be transferred from the Khartoum government to SPLM A in line with the wealth-sharing agreement agreed in January last year, Kwaje added.
The signature will definitively end war in southern Sudan, which erupted in September 1983 when the rebels rose up against Khartoum’s Arab and Muslim domination of the south.
The war and its effects have killed at least 1.5 million people and displaced four million others.
The peace deal does not cover a conflict in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, where tens of thousands of people and around 1.6 million others displaced by nearly two years of clashes opposing rebels to government troops and proxy militia.
While visiting Eritrea yesterday to hold talks with President Isaias Afeworki, Garang pledged to push for a peaceful resolution of the conflicts in Sudan, including those raging in Darfur as well as low-profile insurgency in eastern part.
“We will contact with all forces — armed and political parties — to achieve a fair, just and comprehensive settlement,” Garang told reporters in Asmara.
There is “no meaning of peace in the south while war continues in west or east or every part in our country,” the SPLM A leader added.
