The United Nations took over Monday the monitoring of the ceasefire in the Nuba Mountains, whose people found themselves wedged between the two sides of the civil war who signed a peace accord earlier this year, the world body said.
The ceremony was part of arrangements whereby the United Nations replaces Sudan’s Joint Military Commission — a body of rebel and government representatives — and a military disengagement takes place between the two former warring parties of the north and south.
In a press statement, the United Nations said the UN envoy to Sudan, Jan Pronk, and the UN force commander Major General Fazle Elaki Akbar attended the hand-over ceremony in Tillo.
The 1983-2005 civil war was calamitous for the people of the Nuba mountains in southern central Sudan. Squeezed between the pro-government northerners and the pro-rebel southerners, more than half of the local population fled. But during the past three years of ceasefire, life has returned almost to normal and the population doubled from 720 000 people to more than 1,4-million.
Under the peace agreement on January 9, the United Nations is taking over from the Joint Military Commission this month by deploying peace monitors in southern Sudan, Nuba mountains and the areas known as Blue Nile and Abyei.
The rebels have to withdraw 30% of their troops from northern Sudan within four months, and complete the withdrawal in eight months. – Sapa-AP