Sudan - North-South Peace & Federal System, Or Continuing War & UN Sanctions.

NICOSIA - The chances of peace or a continuing war between the Muslim north and the Christian/animist south of Sudan now are 60:40. In the weeks to the Dec. 31 deadline, set by the UN Security Council at its rare meeting in Nairobi on Nov. 19, both sides will be making huge efforts.

The US and its allies will keep the pressure on the northerners, i.e., the Khartoum government. But for the southern rebels, led by John Garang, the stakes involved now are higher than ever before and failure will hurt them hard, in view of big opportunities being offered by peace.

Sudan has become a major exporter of high quality crude oil and its production is rising rapidly. The output could reach 1 million b/d by 2010 (see Oil Market Trends of this week's APS Review).

Garang, leader of the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), has been relatively in a stronger negotiating position than the Khartoum thanks to support from the Western powers led by the US. Since it came to power in 1989, the Islamist/military regime of President Omar Al-Bashir has been on the wrong side of the geo-politics in this part of the world.

Immediately as Saddam Hussein's forces invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Garang condemned the move, while Bashir sided with Baghdad. Since then Garang has been gaining from a variety of quarters and circumstances, whereas Bashir's regime has been limping along from one miscalculation to another.

A comprehensive north-south peace deal would usher in a new era of political change, going a long way to meeting the aspirations of Sudan's many marginalised groups for economic and political inclusion. It will at least end Africa's longest civil war, which has left millions dead in the south.

The UN Security Council believes that, given the general international reluctance to intervene more aggressively in Sudan, a comprehensive north-south agreement between the government and the SPLM offers the best chance of resolving the country's many conflicts. But similar promises to end the conflict have been made before and success is far from certain.

Killings continue in the western region of Darfur, which has been classed a genocide by the Bush administration, where a separate rebellion is raging against Khartoum. Garang's SPLM has gained considerably from the Darfur conflict and is still insisting on terms which a steadily weakened Khartoum government regards as being unacceptable.

The SPLM, having forced Khartoum to accept the concept of federal rule, wants its peace treaty to become a model for conflict resolution in Darfur and the other parts of Sudan. As such the SPLM has become the leader of the various rebel groups which are seeking autonomy and what Garang calls "a fair share" of Sudan's wealth including oil.

In its first official meeting abroad in 14 years, the Security Council on Nov. 19 witnessed the signing of a pledge by Khartoum and the SPLM to end their 21-year civil war by Dec. 31.

The war in southern Sudan is Africa's bloodiest and, so far, most intractable. It has cost the lives of more than two million people. For that reason the US and its Western allies hope the Nov. 19 agreement will bear fruit.

The UN has been accused in recent months of being soft on the government in Khartoum. But the Nairobi resolution a clear-cut ultimatum to both Khartoum and the SPLM to settle their differences, although there are no threats attached to it.

There have been too many promised deals by Khartoum and Garang - three in 2003 alone. Over a year ago, Sudan's Vice President Ali Osman Taha and Garang signed an agreement in Nairobi and promised a final settlement by end-2003. On Nov. 19 Garang told the Security Council four issues remained unresolved.

To the initial deal, under which there will be a coalition government in Khartoum, while the south will be largely autonomous for a six-year interim period after which it can vote on its future, have come further agreements on wealth-sharing and on disputed regions of the Blue Nile, Nuba Mountains and Abyei.

With the Khartoum government enjoying the support of Mubarak's regime in Cairo, however, the Arab League has failed totally to make any meaningful contribution towards peace in Sudan.

Although the Nairobi resolution calls on Khartoum, the rebels and all armed groups to immediately halt the violence in Darfur, the meeting was almost entirely about the conflict in the south. But the two issues are very different. The demand from the Darfur rebels is for better treatment, not secession. What is on offer for the south is therefore no blueprint for Darfur. Nonetheless, it provides real hope for an early settlement in the western province, where the rebels want to stay within Sudan.

The coming weeks will prove a crucial test for John Danforth, the US ambassador to the UN, who convinced a sceptical council that the Nairobi trip was important to securing agreement. A former US envoy to Sudan, Danforth pushed strongly for constructive engagement with Khartoum, arguing that if the government and the SPLM settle their differences other factions will follow. US and British officials say the north-south agreement meets the aspirations of rebels in Darfur just as much as those in the south.

To underscore the message to both the government and the SPLM that success would be rewarded with many hundreds of millions of US dollars, the UN resolution focused more on incentives than on threats such as UN sanctions. The resolution was crafted after much tough debating and last-minute changes aboard America's official aircraft Air Force Two as it flew towards Africa.

Aid organisations and pressure groups, however, condemned the Council's mild tone, calling it a dangerous step backwards. They say the UN should have threatened targetted sanctions and supported more decisive action for Khartoum to stop the killings in Darfur. "The Sudan government will see this as a letting up in pressure", said Jemera Rone from Human Rights Watch. Jan Pronk, the UN's envoy to Sudan, also wanted more civilian protection. The Financial Times on Nov. 22 quoted Pronk as saying: "In terms of conflict resolution, it is taking it forward. In terms of protection it is not". He added that he was not being given the necessary resources.

Western diplomats insisted that undermining Khartoum at this stage would not work. Given Chinese, Russian and Islamic opposition, UN sanctions were simply not on the table. Military intervention, especially post-Iraq, appears out of the question. Logistical difficulties aside, there is little prospect of sending Western forces to a country at risk from Islamist rebellion while the number of available African troops is also limited.

Yet Danforth insisted he was not going soft. He warned both parties they had to comply. He said about Darfur: "The violence and atrocities must end now. You have heard this message clearly from the Security Council - heed it. I cannot emphasise this point more strongly". On the north-south deal he said: "We are very very close to peace, but we have been close before. Do not let this opportunity slip away".

While the Council's move has a chance of succeeding, it does not absolve the UN of taking stronger action to stop government-supported attacks on Darfur's non-Arab villagers which the US has labelled genocide. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan recently hinted at possible outside military action in Darfur: "When crimes on such a scale are being committed, and a sovereign state appears unable or unwilling to protect its own citizens, a grave responsibility falls on the international community, and specifically on this Council".

Lori Handrahan, a research fellow at Oxford University's International Gender Centre and at the CUNY Centre in Washington, said in an article published on Nov. 24 by the International Herald Tribune (IHT): "The continuing genocide in Sudan has catalyzed the process again... Yes, women and girls are being raped and gang-raped in Darfur..."

Darfur Fighting: On Nov. 25, The New York Times (NYT) quoted Suleiman Jamous, a senior commander with the rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), as saying a government warplane had bombed a rebel camp in a village called Tadit, roughly 40 km south-west of the North Darfur capital, El-Fashir. Reuters quoted another SLA field commander as saying 25 rebel soldiers were killed in that raid. Jamous said the SLA had vacated another town near El-Fashir, called Tawilah, but denied capturing it in the first place, as the government and UN officials said earlier last week. When government troops attacked a nearby village, he said, rebel forces chased them out of the village and into Tawilah. The air-strikes, if confirmed, would constitute a violation of a security protocol agreed to by Khartoum in the recent Abuja talks.