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US urges world to bolster fragile Sudan peace deal
Thu, June 25 2009
By AFP [WASHINGTON - USA]
The United States on Tuesday urged the world community to help bolster a fragile 2005 peace deal between north and south Sudan as it faces "very important milestones" in the next 19 months. Senior US officials issued the appeal at an international conference here in support of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) ahead of national elections in February and a referendum on the future of southern Sudan in January 2011.

"Our time is short," Scott Gration, the US special envoy for Sudan, told the delegates from the United Nations, Europe, Japan, China, and Russia as well as African countries like Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and South Africa.

"It's time to move forward. It's time to work together to bring peace to this country that's permanent and lasting," General Gration, a former air force officer, told the gathering in a hotel in Washington. Gration urged the delegates "to ensure that we're able to create an environment where the parties in Sudan can fully implement the CPA and achieve a long term, a lasting peace for their people."

Under a deal that ended a two-decade civil war, the longest in Africa, the south has a six-year transitional period of regional autonomy and takes part in a unity government until the 2011 referendum on self-determination. However, the Sudanese government in Khartoum and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) have still to secure agreements on border demarcations, wealth-sharing and power-sharing.

A boundary dispute over the oil-rich Abyei region presents the most immediate challenge, officials said, as the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague is set to issue a ruling next month. Gration told reporters that the government and the SPLM, meeting in Washington in the days before the conference, reached an understanding that the ruling "will be final and binding."

 

 

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