The recent breakthrough in negotiations between Khartoum and the SPLA promises a new beginning for Sudan, but sceptics doubt the signatories' sincerity, writes Gamal Nkrumah Click to view caption They play the game differently in Sudan nowadays. Or so they say. In an about face, the Sudanese government announced that it has clinched a tentative deal with the country's largest armed opposition group, the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), and acquiesced to two key SPLA demands -- self- determination for the southern Sudanese people and the separation of religion from the state. What has been agreed upon is described by both sides as a "basic agreement" to terminate the 20-year civil war that has claimed over two million lives and internally displaced, or turned into refugees, an estimated five million southern Sudanese. Several prickly issues, however, are yet to be resolved. The United States has emerged as the key facilitator -- behind the scenes -- of the Sudanese peace talks. Senator John Danforth, US President George W Bush's Special Envoy for Peace in Sudan, and US Assistant Secretary of State Walter Kannister both urged the two sides to strike a comprehensive peace deal. The basic agreement was concluded under the auspices of the Inter- Governmental Authority for Development (IGAD) a regional organisation which groups seven East African countries, including Sudan. Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi played an especially prominent role because he enjoys the trust and friendship of the Sudanese protagonists. Kenya, which heads the IGAD committee on Sudan, has sheltered hundreds of thousands of Sudanese refugees. After five weeks of difficult negotiations in the Kenyan town of Machakos, representatives of the Sudanese government and the SPLA reached a basic agreement on the political future of the country. The agreement stipulates that a referendum in southern Sudan will be held in six years after which southerners will either opt to secede, or remain in a federal state comprised of two areas -- north and south Sudan. Under the agreement, the 1998 Sudanese Constitution is to be scrapped and replaced by a new constitution which accommodates the federal structures of the new Sudan. The key issues agreed upon, and which in the past constituted a seemingly insurmountable stumbling block, are the separation of state and religion and the right of the southern Sudanese to self- determination. The problem, however, is that the SPLA, claims to represent not just southerners, but people from other regions in Sudan, such as the people of the Nuba Mountains in western Sudan. Moreover, northern groups politically allied to the SPLA want to see a secular, democratic and united Sudan. Many do not want the north to continue to be governed under Islamic Shari'a law while the south becomes secular. The entire country, they argue, must be secular and democratic. In order to allay such fears, the SPLA dispatched Pagan Amum, a high-ranking SPLA leader and secretary-general of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) -- the umbrella opposition organisation grouping the SPLA and other mainly northern Sudanese opposition parties -- to Cairo recently. The NDA has been thrown into disarray, argue critics of the basic agreement between Khartoum and the SPLA. Northern NDA leaders fear that the SPLA deal means that they might be left out in the cold. They, too, are fighting for a secular and democratic Sudan. And there are concerns that self-determination will inevitably lead to the secession of the south, which will make their fight for secularism and democracy in the north that much harder. The SPLA, however, stresses that it should not be the only partner in a future coalition government, and insists that its northern- based NDA partners must be included in any future government of national unity. NDA leaders are scheduled to convene a meeting in the Eritrean capital, Asmara, at the end of the month. "The NDA is still very much in the picture. The SPLA is a key component of the NDA and the umbrella opposition grouping has long delegated the SPLA to negotiate independently with the Sudanese government," Farouk Abu Eissa, head of the Cairo-based Arab Lawyers Union and official spokesman for the NDA told Al- Ahram Weekly. "The NDA is meeting in Asmara at the end of the month before the resumption of negotiations between the SPLA and the Sudanese government in August in Kenya. The SPLA's partners in the NDA expect a full report, and the collective NDA views and concerns will be taken into account," explained Abu Eissa. Another sticking point is the SPLA's insistence that the Nuba Mountains region of western Sudan and the Blue Nile region of eastern Sudan must also be granted the right to self-determination. The Sudanese government currently flatly refuses to accept the incorporation of the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile regions into southern Sudan. The two regions are considered strongholds of the SPLA, and many leading SPLA commanders hail from these regions which are technically located in northern Sudan. An even more intractable issue is that the SPLA and the Sudanese government cannot agree on the borders between the north and south. This contentious issue has taken on added significance with the discovery of vast oil deposits, mostly along the largely uncharted and ill-defined border between northern and southern Sudan. Oil has become the country's main source of foreign exchange and the government, amid charges that it is funding its war chest with oil revenues, has full control over oil production in conjunction with foreign firms. The SPLA has no access to oil revenues and Khartoum insists that the SPLA will not do so under the new basic agreement. The Sudanese government obviously does not want to relinquish its sole control over the oil fields. Malaysia's Petronas, Sudan's Sudapet and China National Petroleum Company control much of Sudan's oil industry between them. But the door is open for others to join the fray. India's state-owned Oil and National Gas Corporation (ONGC) is buying a 25 per cent stake in the Greater Nile Petroleum from Canada's Talisman Energy. Talisman, under intense US pressure, is reluctantly pulling out of Sudan. The centre of the oil extraction industry is the town of Bentiu, 750 kilometres south of Khartoum, in the disputed border area between northern and southern Sudan. Some observers doubt whether the Sudanese government means what it says. The ruling National Congress Party (NCP) which Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir heads, is keen on amalgamating the Egyptian-Libyan initiative on Sudan with the IGAD peace initiative for Sudan. Preferring instead to focus on the IGAD initiative, Washington has, however, deliberately sidelined the Egyptian-Libyan initiative to the chagrin of Sudan's northern neighbours, other Arab countries and the northern Sudanese opposition groups.
