Darfur casts shadow over Sudan peace deal

NAIROBI - Sudanese hailed a New Year accord ending a north-south civil war, but celebrations were tempered by fear the fledgling pact may unravel under pressure from the separate Darfur conflict in the west.


Amid cries of delight and thanksgiving prayers, government and southern rebels signed the final chapters of a peace deal in neighbouring Kenya on Friday, paving the way for a comprehensive accord ending Africa's longest-running civil war.


Delegates from the government and rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) signed the last two of eight peace protocols that together make up an overall accord ending 21 years of war in the oil-producing south.


A peace ceremony setting an official seal on the accord is tentatively set for January 9 in Nairobi.


The power-sharing accords are intended to end the conflict in the south that has killed an estimated two million people, mainly through famine and disease, and uprooted four million.


The SPLM of the mainly animist and Christian south have been fighting the government since 1983, when Khartoum tried to impose Islamic law on the entire country. Issues of oil, ethnicity and governance have complicated the conflict.


UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan welcomed the accord and said the official signing of the peace deal would "...usher in a new era of peace in Sudan, in which the United Nations is prepared to play a significant role."


US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Washington would help Khartoum and the southern rebels implement the deal.


The pact does not cover the conflict in Darfur, where more than a year of fighting has created what the United Nations says is one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.


Darfur's deepening crisis has repeatedly complicated the painstaking negotiations by Khartoum and the SPLM to end the older, bloodier struggle in the oil-exporting south.


"The Darfur cloud is going to cast a dark shadow over the joy of today's agreement," John Prendergast of the influential International Crisis Group think tank.


"The rapid disintegration in Darfur will complicate the implementation of this agreement. The international community will need to be very vigilant on all the issues, especially on revenue and oil and wealth-sharing."


SPLM leader John Garang, set to become Sudanese Vice President under the peace accords, is eager to enter government to rebuild the south and get a share of oil revenues. But doubts have blossomed among his colleagues, who sympathise with Darfur's rebels, about whether now is the time to share power.


Garang has long expressed sympathy with the African rebels in Darfur, whose demands for a bigger political say in Khartoum and more state resources are similar to the SPLM's own.


Garang has said Khartoum has used the same techniques in Darfur, where tens of thousands of people have been killed as a result of the conflict, that it once used against his forces.


"No man wants to marry an ugly woman," SPLA leader John Garang has said, explaining Khartoum's attractiveness as a partner was sullied by violence Washington calls genocide.


The African Union said security in Darfur had worsened after an attack this week by a previously unknown rebel group, forcing the UN to stop food deliveries to 250,000 displaced people.


"Our happiness will not be complete unless we solve the problem of Darfur," Sudan President Hassan Omar al-Bashir told Friday's brief but raucous signing in Kenya's Naivasha town.


A leader of one of Darfur's rebel groups, Sudan Liberation Army chairman Abdel Wahed Mohamed al-Nur, said that only fair deals for all the marginalised people of Sudan would bring a lasting peace in Sudan.


- REUTERS