Round and round towards war?
The Sudan peace talks are producing more ambiguity than solutions. Dina Ezzat reports
It is unclear what will become of the current round of problematic peace talks between the Sudanese government and its most powerful opposition group the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). The talks that opened 11 August in Kenya have been bumpy, with both negotiating teams failing to even approach agreement on any of the standing issues related to the division of power and wealth between both sides under a prospective peace settlement. Also evasive in this seventh round is an agreement on the nature of law, religious or secular, to be enforced in the Sudanese capital Khartoum, where many Muslims live alongside non-Muslims.
This failure has caused both sides to exchange harsh accusations in the course of negotiations and in public. On Monday, Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir warned the SPLM/A that his government cannot simply accede to what he qualified as extravagant requests. "If they want to go back to war we are ready for it," Al-Bashir said.
For his part, SPLM/A leader John Garang made public statements accusing the Sudanese government of deliberately attempting to sabotage the Kenya talks.
Garang suggested that the Sudanese government does not want to do justice to the fair demands of the SPLM/ A. He warned that if the Sudanese government decided to stick to what he considers intransigent positions then this round of talks could end in failure, putting a negative seal upon the inconclusiveness that characterised the sixth round that ended 12 July.
Meanwhile, pressure is being applied at the regional and international levels to encourage both sides to show more flexibility. In relation to its Sudan Peace Act of October 2002, which imposes economic and military penalties against the Sudanese government for failing to make a deal with the southern opposition, the United States has been indicating that it wants a peace deal by next October.
US officials conducting talks with the government and opposition in Kenya indicated Washington's determination to see a Sudan peace deal round the corner and threatened, in the words of one US official, that "the side causing problems will have to be punished."
These caveats have not been well received by a Sudanese government that has often indirectly accused the US of prolonging civil war by arming and financing the SPLM/A.
For its part, Egypt has been arguing with an obvious sense of determination that it is Garang rather than the Sudanese government who has to show flexibility.
"The Sudanese government has done all it could and it is now the time for Mr Garang to refrain from inflexibility," Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher commented earlier this week in Cairo. Maher was addressing the press in a joint conference held with visiting Kenyan Foreign Minister Steven Musyoka who also voiced appreciation for the performance and flexibility of the Sudanese government in the peace talks.
The most contentious points in the current talks are related to a working document on the division of power and wealth that was originally forwarded to the sixth round of talks. This document indicated, among other things, the right of the SPLM/A to have its own central bank and its own ministry and minister of defence. Also indicated in the document was the right of the SPLM/A-aligned Sudanese vice-president to veto the rulings of the Sudanese president himself if he sees these harming the interests of the southern parts of the country.
At the time, the SPLM/A had welcomed the document as a step towards ending its civil strife with the predominantly northern and highly Islamist Sudanese government. The Khartoum regime, for its part, totally rejected the document as a separationist working paper that "can only be thrown in the trash bin". The government argued that the proposed formula ran against all the principles of the Machakos peace plan that aimed to underline the unity rather than the division of the Sudan.
The Sudanese government and the SPLM/A have been at war since 1983 over issues related to the imposition of Islamic laws in the largely non-Muslim southern parts of the country and administrative control over resources and development in the South. Over the years, several attempts to promote an end to this war, including a joint Egyptian-Libyan initiative, stumbled over the division of wealth and power. However, with the growing interest in the recently tapped oil reserves in the southern parts of the Sudan, international efforts to end military hostilities in oil- rich areas increased.
In July 2002 the Sudanese government and the SPLM/A agreed on a framework for peace called the Machakos protocols. These were reached under the intensive diplomatic pressure of the US and the regional body IGAD (Inter-Governmental Authority for Development). The protocols suggested dual Islamic and secular constitutions for the North and South, respectively. It also proposed a negotiation mechanism leading to a lasting peace agreement. Ultimately, according to the Machakos protocols, a referendum on unity or southern secession would be held six years after a peace deal is reached. These six years would be used to make the option of unity attractive to all Sudanese.
The international community, including Arab states, largely welcomed the deal, stressing the need for sustained effort to stimulate development and equity in southern Sudan.
Sources close to the current talks say that a failure this round would not mean the end of the talks but would indeed be a very problematic turn. They agree that the outcome of these talks essentially relies upon the pressure exerted by the US. If the US was to respond favourably to requests made by Egypt and the Arab League to force Garang to show flexibility, then peace efforts could improve, the sources said. However, they warned that if Washington keeps siding with the SPLM/A and chooses to sanction the government under the Sudan Peace Act, then a serious deterioration of the peace negotiations could be in the pipeline, along with a resumption of intense military hostilities.
