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Sudan govt, Darfur rebel faction sign peace deal

Posted on: Friday, 5 May 2006, 12:23 CDT

By Estelle Shirbon

ABUJA (Reuters) - The government of Sudan and the main Darfur rebel faction signed a peace agreement on Friday to end three years of fighting that has killed tens of thousands of people and forced 2 million to flee their homes.

Majzoub al-Khalifa, head of the government's negotiating team, and rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) faction leader Minni Arcua Minnawi signed the agreement in the Nigerian capital Abuja after days of intense negotiations and international pressure.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo praised the SLA chief for being not only a military commander but a political leader.

"Leadership comes to the fore when hard decisions are to be made," he said to applause from diplomats gathered at Obasanjo's presidential compound.

"Unless the right spirit is there, the right attitude, this document will not be worth the paper it's written on. The spirit that led to the signing should continue to guide the implementation," Obasanjo added.

Both the government and the SLA faction said they were signing the document despite reservations over power sharing and security in order to end the suffering in Darfur.

Aid organizations say the conflict has created one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.

But it was unclear whether the agreement, signed after two years of African Union-mediated talks, will translate into peace on the ground in Darfur.

A rival faction of the SLA and the smaller Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) have rejected the deal.

Minnawi has more support among SLA fighters than rival faction leader Abdel Wahed Mohammed al-Nur, observers say, and JEM is marginal in terms of forces on the ground.

"JEM frankly doesn't matter but Abdel Wahed does. There are provisions in the agreement for armed groups that are not signatory to be made to observe the agreement," said a Western diplomat, who has been involved in crafting the blueprint.

Obasanjo said the international community would continue to appeal to those who had refused to sign to come on board.

FIRST STEP

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, who had helped secure the deal, said the deal was a first step.

"This can be a very important day of hope and opportunity for the poor people of Darfur who have been suffering, but it is only a step," he told reporters in Abuja.

"It has to be followed through on the ground by the government and the (rebel) movement with support from the African Union mission and we hope from a U.N. force," he added.

Rebels took up arms in early 2003 in ethnically mixed Darfur, a region the size of France, over what they saw as neglect by the Arab-dominated central government.

Khartoum used militias, drawn from Arab tribes, to crush the rebellion. A campaign of arson, looting and rape has caused a humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur and the United States labels the violence there "genocide."

Western governments have called for the 7,000-strong AU peacekeeping mission to be turned over to the United Nations but the government in Khartoum has said it would only consider U.N. troops in Darfur after a peace agreement.

U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland said access for aid workers in Darfur is at its worst level in two years.

"I first spoke to the U.N. Security Council on Darfur two years ago, calling it ethnic cleansing of the worst kind. Today, I could simply hit the rewind button on much of that earlier briefing," he wrote in an editorial on Friday.

British-based aid group Oxfam called on all sides to ensure any peace agreement coming out of Abuja is enforced.

"Previous ceasefires have been violated at will and have made little difference to the millions of people in Darfur who live with the daily threat of violence," Oxfam regional director Paul Smith-Lomas said.

Source: REUTERS

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