Sudan, eastern rebels sign peace deal / Sudan’s Government Signs Peace Accord With Rebel Group in East / Sudanese Government Signs Peace Accord with Eastern Rebel Forces
Six stories from the past day:
(See also, most recently, the previous AFP story.)
From AFP...
The Sudanese government and rebels from the Eastern Front signed a peace accord yesterday [Saturday] that was negotiated with Eritrean help and is aimed at ending a 12-year armed conflict, Sudanese public radio reported.
The agreement on power-sharing, the sharing of resources and security arrangements was signed by Mustafa Osman Ismail, Khartoum’s negotiator, and Moussa Mohammed Ahmed, chief of the Eastern Front.
The signing took place at the presidential palace in the Eritrean capital of Asmara in the presence of President Issaias Afeworki.
A ceremony organised to mark the signing began at about 5.30 pm (1430 GMT), an hour later than scheduled. After introductory speeches, the parties adjourned temporarily for iftar, the breaking of the Ramadan daily fast. During the ceremony, Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir called the peace deal an example of “Africans solving an African problem without foreign help”.
That was a preamble to his reiteration that Sudan rejects a United Nations proposal to send a peacekeeping force to the still war-torn western region of Darfur.
Ahmed called the accord historic, saying it “definitively turns the page on conflict and opens the way to development”. The deal would be the third peace agreement signed by Khartoum with rebel groups in various parts of the largest nation in Africa in less than two years.
An agreement between Khartoum and the main rebel faction in Darfur was signed in May this year but has failed to take hold. A landmark peace deal was also signed between Khartoum and southern rebels in January 2005, bringing an end to more than two decades of fighting—the longest civil war in Africa.
The former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement is now in a national unity government with Bashir’s National Congress, but relations have often been strained.
Bashir was to meet Eritrean President Issaias Afeworki on the sidelines of the ceremony, the Sudanese state news agency Suna reported.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit and Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa are among the foreign officials who attended the signing, which comes amid mounting pressure on Khartoum over Darfur.
The latest round of negotiations between the Sudanese government and the Eastern Front resumed after a ceasefire agreement was reached on June 19.
The Eastern Front was created last year by the region’s largest ethnic group, the Beja, and the Rashidiya Arabs. The grouping has similar aims to its better-known counterparts in Darfur—greater autonomy and control of resources.
The Sudanese government has signed a peace deal with rebels from the east of the country.
The Eastern Front consists of rebels from two movements, the Beja Congress and the Rashaida Free Lions.
They fought a low intensity conflict for 10 years, complaining that their region has been neglected by the central government.
It is the third peace deal in under two years for Sudan following agreements covering the south and Darfur.
Speaking at the signing ceremony, Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir hailed the eastern deal as an example of Africans solving an African problem without foreign help.
Promise of investment
Unlike Sudan's other peace agreements in the south and west, the international community and, in particular, the United Nations, have been excluded from this process.
Eritrea, Sudan's tiny eastern neighbour hosted and mediated four months of talks.
As in Darfur to the west, both the Beja Congress and the Rashaida Free Lions complained that Sudan's east has suffered from neglect and under-investment.
A long-running campaign has been pursued at a low level with attacks on oil installations and government infrastructure. It is thought that in return for signing, eastern rebel leaders have been given ministerial positions in Khartoum and the promise of investment in the region.
The east provides Sudan with its only access to the sea.
Most of the country's trade goes through the area as well as nearly 500,000 barrels of oil a day in a pipeline from the south.
But with Darfur's peace deal floundering and the southern agreement treading water, Khartoum's record of implementing what they sign is at best mixed.
(An earlier version is also still available on AlertNet.)
Eastern rebels and the government of Sudan signed an agreement on Saturday to end a decade of low-level revolt in a region rich in natural resources but beset by poverty.
The agreement was signed in the Eritrean capital, Asmara, by Sudanese presidential advisor Mustafa Osman Ismail and the head of the rebel Eastern Front delegation Musa Mohammed Ahmed.
Ismail called the deal "a new dawn" and a "road map to stability and development in the east".
Ahmed said: "Our priorities will be rebuilding the east in complete transparency."
The agreement, which sparked singing and dancing after it was signed, is the third peace deal Khartoum has negotiated in less then two years. If fully implemented it will stabilise one of Sudan's most important areas economically.
Sudan's east hosts its largest gold mine, diamond resources and its only port, Port Sudan, where its main oil pipelines feed exports to the outside world. But it is also a deeply impoverished region.
"Eastern Sudan is the most marginalised area in Sudan and by signing this agreement there is admission and recognition of this fact," said Yasir Arman of the former southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), which concluded a north-south peace deal with the government in January 2005.
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who led the high-level delegation to neighbouring Eritrea which mediated the pact, pledged his government's support.
"We are totally committed to implement this according to the letter and the spirit of the agreement," he told an opening ceremony.
NEGLECT
The Eastern Front rebels are comprised of the non-Arab Beja and the pure Arab Rashaidiya tribes. They took up arms complaining Khartoum exploited their natural resources without developing the region.
During about a decade of low-scale conflict, eastern rebels allied themselves with former southern rebels and those from Darfur. But after insurgents elsewhere in the country signed peace deals to join the central government, the eastern rebels found themselves in a weaker negotiating position.
The coalition government formed last year with the SPLM paved the way for eastern talks after numerous false starts.
Amna Dirar, the secretary-general of the main eastern political party, the Beja Congress, said the agreement signed on Saturday includes positions in the government.
The power-sharing deal gives the Eastern Front one junior minister in Khartoum, assistant to the president and an advisor to the president, Dirar said. It also gets eight parliamentary seats in Khartoum and 10 parliamentary seats in each of the three eastern states, among other posts.
The SPLM's Arman cautioned, however: "What is more important is the implementation of the agreement not just signing it."
Implementation of the north-south deal has been slow. And the peace accord signed in May for Darfur in Sudan's west has so far failed to end the fighting.
Ahmed Hamid Birki, head of the Rashaidiya tribe, said the people in eastern Sudan are ready the dividends of peace. "The first thing, God willing, that they will do is lift the state of emergency and open the borders with Eritrea for trade," he said.
The deal will likely strengthen Eritrean-Sudanese relations, which have been strained as Asmara has hosted both southern and Darfur rebels and Sudanese opposition politicians.
Sudan accused Asmara of arming and training Sudanese rebels, a charge Eritrea denies.
By Jeffrey Gettleman of the "New York Times"...
The Sudanese government signed a peace deal on Saturday with a small rebel movement in the eastern part of the country, an agreement intended to end fighting that has lasted 10 years though with nowhere near the intensity of the conflict in Darfur.
According to state-run news media, Mustafa Osman Ismail, a government negotiator, and Mussa Mohammed Ahmed, chief of the Eastern Front, signed the deal at the presidential palace in Asmara, Eritrea.
According to Agence France-Presse, Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, called it an example of “Africans solving an African problem without foreign help,” a clear reference to his government’s continuing refusal to allow United Nations peacekeepers into Darfur. [see above]
The rebels in eastern Sudan never posed the threat to the military dictatorship that Darfur’s insurgents have, though they conducted hit-and-run guerrilla attacks on government forces for some of the same reasons. Eastern Sudan, like Darfur, is a poor, neglected area where many people feel disenfranchised.
Under the accord, the Eastern Front will get more representation in the national and regional administrations, including high-ranking posts in Khartoum, the capital.
The Darfur crisis, meanwhile, continues, with more fighting in El Fasher, one of Darfur’s bigger towns, and reported clashes along Sudan’s lawless border with Chad.
President Bush’s special envoy for Sudan, Andrew S. Natsios, arrived in Khartoum on Friday night to begin meetings with top Sudanese officials. Few here [Khartoum] expect President Bashir to back down from his refusal to allow United Nations peacekeepers to patrol Darfur.
Darfur is patrolled by African Union peacekeepers who are underfinanced and have failed so far to stop the bloodshed. The African Union has agreed to keep its peacekeepers through the end of the year in the hope that a bigger and better-equipped United Nations force will replace them.
The Sudanese government signed a peace deal Saturday with a group of rebels from eastern Sudan, ending a deadly strife that has been overshadowed by the conflict in the country's western Darfur region.
The Eastern Rebel Front has fought an intermittent war with the Sudanese government for 10 years. The signing of the agreement is considered a relief to Khartoum, which has been struggling to put down rebellions on both sides of the country, as well as to keep a shaky peace after a civil war with the south.
The conflict in Sudan's east bore some similarities to the more publicized strife in Darfur. In 2005, the U.N. World Food Program said the malnutrition rate in the east had grown worse than in Darfur.
On Saturday, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir reiterated his opposition to allowing U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur.
The U.N. wants to send 20,000 U.N. troops to Darfur to replace an ill-equipped and understaffed African Union force that has not been able to quell the violence. More than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been displaced since rebel groups rose up against the Khartoum government in early 2003.
Sudan ``will never be the first African country to allow re-colonization of the continent to begin on its soil,'' al-Bashir said in the capital of neighboring Eritrea, Asmara, where the peace deal was signed. ``But we are for a United Nations role that would provide logistical and material assistance to the African Union to carry out its role.''
Al-Bashir and First Vice President Salva Kiir had traveled Eritrea to sign the deal with leaders of the Eastern Rebel Front under supervision of Eritrea's government.
Al-Bashir promised Saturday that all the money that was being spent on war will be paid for development.
The final peace deal was set to call for a cease-fire, the lifting of a state of emergency in Sudan's east and the deployment of Sudanese forces to the region, according to the official Sudanese news agency, SUNA.
Some $600 million also would be allocated to health and water programs in the area over the next five years, SUNA reported.
The Eastern Rebel Front has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks on Sudan's infrastructure, including an oil pipeline, and has ambushed cargo convoys and passenger buses. It also has threatened a vital road linking Khartoum with the country's main seaport on the Red Sea in eastern Sudan.
Some Darfur rebels also have fought in the east, and Eritrea has a history of supporting both the eastern and western Darfurian rebels.
From VOA...
The Sudanese government and rebel forces in the country's eastern region have signed a peace deal ending a decade-long conflict.
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir Saturday said his government is committed to the agreement. He made the vow shortly before the deal was signed in a ceremony in the Eritrean capital, Asmara.
The government had announced the agreement earlier this week.
The rebels are a coalition of two ethnic groups called the Eastern Front. They are seeking greater autonomy and more control over their region's natural resources. They have been joined by rebels from the south and the western Darfur region.
This is the third peace agreement Khartoum has reached with various rebel groups in less than two years.
The northern-based government signed a landmark power-sharing deal in January 2005 that ended more than two decades of fighting with southern rebels.
The government also signed a peace accord back in May with the western rebels, but the fighting in Darfur continues.
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