CAIRO, Egypt, Oct 01, 2003 (AP) -- The Sudanese government and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army could reach a final peace agreement within weeks, after last month's breakthrough in negotiations, Sudan's Vice President Ali Osman Taha said Wednesday.
Speaking after talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Taha told reporters that Sudan was seeking financial support from Arab states for reconstruction in the south of the country, which has been ravaged by the civil war that broke out in 1983.
Asked if a final peace accord was near, Taha said: "We expect that in few weeks."
After three weeks of talks in the Kenyan town of Naivasha, Taha and SPLA leader John Garang signed an agreement Sept. 25 on the deployment of rival forces during an interim administration. The accord resolved one of the thorniest issues of the long-running negotiations.
"This is a good beginning to start building a bridge of confidence that will take us to a political solution," Taha said, adding that Mubarak praised the Sept. 25 agreement.
The talks are due to resume Oct. 6, when the agenda will include the sharing of power and wealth, and the administration of three disputed areas in central Sudan.
The SPLA, which draws its support from the south, wants southerners to acquire a sizable share of the revenue from the oil wells that lie on both sides of the traditional demarcation line between the south and the north of the country.
The war has cost the lives of more than 2 million people - killed by fighting and war-induced famine and disease. While often seen as a religious conflict between the animist and Christian southerners against Muslim northerners, it is also driven by competition over land and resources.
In 2002, the two sides reached a deal, known as the Machakos Protocol, that provided for the government maintaining Islamic law in the north and for southerners to hold a referendum on self-determination.
The Mubarak government is known to be opposed to any secession of the south as it fears this would increase demands for the Nile River's water, which Egypt views as its lifeblood.







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