Khartoum | Monday
THE Sudanese government on Sunday signed a US-brokered agreement aimed at protecting civilians in war-torn southern Sudan, weeks after it was fiercely criticised for bombing civilians.
”The proposal is a comprehensive one that covers protection, from war-related harm, of not only civilians but also civilian installations and other civilian aspects,” Sudanese Foreign Under Secretary Mutraf Siddeiq said after signing the deal.
Siddeiq signed the agreement in Khartoum with US charge d’affaires Raymond Brown, who said it had also been signed by the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army representatives in Nairobi, Kenya. The agreement lasts for a year and is renewable, said Siddeiq, adding that ”a non-permanent monitoring commission will be formed when need arises for verification of any violation by either party.”
He said ”the proposal, in the final analysis, is a gradual process for stopping the war.”
The United States had announced that it would suspend talks with the government on efforts to end the war until Khartoum offers a full explanation for a February 20 helicopter raid in southern Sudan that killed 17 civilians who had been receiving UN food aid.
US State Department representative Richard Boucher had said such an agreement would be a ”start to getting back to peace discussions” though a signature on an agreement was not the main objective.
Siddeiq described the deal as ”a test balloon by the US to measure the willingness of the two parties (for) implementing it and observing it in all fighting zones.”
”It is the US step-by-step policy which we have accepted and, similarly, accepted a comprehensive ceasefire but the other party has turned it down,” said the Foreign Under Secretary who led the government delegation to the negotiations in Switzerland last January that resulted in conclusion of a ceasefire in central Sudan’s Nuba Mountains.
At least one million people have been killed in Sudan’s 18-year civil war, which has pitted a coalition of animist and Christian rebel groups from the north and south against successive Arab and Muslim governments in Khartoum. – Sapa-AFP