Sudan: Vice President optimistic about peace deal

(SomaliNet) Urging the splintered rebel movements in Darfur to unite to negotiate peace, Sudan\'s vice president expressed optimism that the agreement ending a 21-year war in southern Sudan will be implemented.

Salva Kiir, who is also the leader of southern Sudan, said his goal is to help bring peace to the country - and as he headed to Washington, he said he would also \"be happy\" if he could reconcile U.S. President George W. Bush and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

Al-Bashir, long accused by the West of fomenting strife that has killed hundreds of thousands, said Tuesday in South Africa that he is committed to bringing peace to the south and to western Darfur.

\"We would like to assure you that there will be no return to war whatever the differences are between the parties,\" al-Bashir told guests at a banquet thrown by his host, South African President Thabo Mbeki.

Asked about al-Bashir\'s comments after meeting U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Kiir said: \"I was the first who said we are not going back to war again, and so it is my view that we are not going back to war in Sudan.\"

In mid-October, Sudan faced its biggest political crisis since the end of the civil war when the Sudanese People\'s Liberation Movement, led by Kiir, walked out of the government, accusing Khartoum of multiple breaches of the 2005 peace deal, known as the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, or CPA.

The SPLM accused the government of not sharing the country\'s oil wealth as agreed, not pulling troops out of southern Sudan, and remilitarizing contested border zones where the main oil reserves are located.

Al-Bashir and Kiir met recently and resolved some issues, and Kiir expressed hope that when he returns to Khartoum \"we\'ll be able to sit down and meet with president Bashir and to resolve all the issues that might not have been resolved,\" including the unresolved status of the oil-rich Abyei region.

There are fears that if conflict erupts again in southern Sudan - where 2 million people died in the civil war - it will make it even harder to find a solution in Darfur.

\"If you don\'t implement the CPA, and possibly if the war erupts again in the south, you would not get peace in Darfur,\" Kiir told reporters.

\"And so we do not want a situation where you don\'t bring peace in Darfur and you go back to war in southern Sudan,\" he said. \"We want to prevent these two things, and this is why we say, let us implement the Comprehensive Peace Agreement so that we get the solution to the conflict in Darfur.\"

Highly anticipated U.N. and African Union-brokered talks to try to end the Darfur conflict opened earlier this month in the Libyan coastal town of Sirte without the most prominent rebel leaders.

But negotiations between the Sudanese government and Darfur rebels have been postponed until December to try to get some of the recalcitrant rebel chiefs to join the talks.

Ban told reporters just before meeting Kiir that he was going to ask him \"to exercise his political influence to talk to all the leaders of the rebel groups so that they can get on board this political negotiation.\" He said he also wants the new U.N. envoy in Sudan, Ashraf Qazi, to draw up a \"concrete plan of action\" to ensure smooth implementation of the CPA.

In terms of the Darfur rebels who are now fragmented in over 20 movements, Kiir said, \"the two issues that are most important (are) to accept the unity and agree on one common agenda and one delegation that can go for the (peace) talks.\"
\"We hope that we will succeed in doing that,\" he said.

\"That can be a way forward to get the solution to the conflict,\" Kiir said. \"The issue of their leadership can be a secondary thing. That can be negotiated later on.\" –iht.com