Consultations on Sudan Peace Process to Start in Late OctoberThe envoys from the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) will go to Khartoum on October 25 this year to consult with the Sudanese government about the forthcoming IGAD round of talks on the conflict in the country.IGAD is composed of seven East African countries including the Sudan, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Uganda and Kenya. The envoys will include Kenyan Presidential Envoy Ambassador Daniel Mboya, said the Sudanese Embassy in Nairobi in a statement on Thursday. The embassy said that "the government of the Sudan welcomes the envoys visit to Khartoum and reiterates its position of giving the IGAD Peace Process one more chance to reach a final settlement of the dispute". During the recent visit to Nairobi by Gahzi Salah-ed-Din, advisor to Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir on peace affairs, the Sudanese government made its stand clearly that if the coming round of talks is going to fail, a comprehensive review of the process should be undertaken with a view to rejuvenating the eight- year-old peace process, the embassy said. Spokesman for the Sudanese embassy Dirdeiry Ahmed said the main challenge which the IGAD envoys are going to face, while preparing for the talks, is to convince the rebel movement to change its agenda of using the IGAD negotiations to dismantle the government. The rebel's agenda of dismantling the Khartoum government was the subject of discussion between the Kenyan leadership and Salah- ed-Din and considered by the Sudanese government to be the main reason for not seeing any substantial progress in the negotiations, the statement said. A round of IGAD talks between the Sudanese government and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) was originally scheduled for September 24, but Khartoum asked it to be postponed for further consultations with IGAD. The Sudan peace talks in Kenya under the auspices of IGAD have dragged on since 1994 and no real sign of progress has been achieved. The Sudan conflict between the government and the rebel movement in southern Sudan has cost around 2 million lives through war, disease and famine since 1983. |
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