By IPS Correspondents
NAIROBI, Sep 6 2003 (IPS)

International pressure is mounting on the government of Sudan and the main rebel movement, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), to make peace or risk sanctions.

Yielding to the pressure, SPLA leader John Garang and Sudan’s first vice-president Ali Osman Mohamed Taha began consultations Thursday evening in Naivasha, a town 85 kilometres northwest of the Kenyan capital Nairobi, to salvage the talks which have already collapsed seven times since last year.

The next round of talks, between the Khartoum government and the SPLA, will take place in Kenya on Sep. 10.

The meeting between Garang and Taha followed pressure by the governments of Norway, Britain, Italy and the United States to end Africa’s longest conflict, which has claimed more than two million lives, mostly in the south, since 1983.

The four governments have been acting as observers to the Sudanese peace talks.

Deng Alor, governor of south Sudan’s Bahr el Ghazal region, confirmed that there has been pressure from the United States for peace agreement to be reached soon. “The U.S. is keen on an agreement before the end of the year,” he told IPS.

The U.S. government, wary of a possibility of a failed state that may breed terrorism, has warned that it would enforce the Sudan Peace Act if it found that Khartoum was not negotiating in good faith.

Signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush in Oct. last year, the Act seeks to facilitate a comprehensive solution to the Sudanese conflict.

Under the Act, Washington would provide the SPLA with 100 million U.S. dollars every year for three years, in support of civil administration, communication, infrastructure, education, health and agriculture.

Some Sudanese are optimistic that the meeting between Garang and Taha will bear fruit and pave way for a final peace deal.

“We have been in war for too long and it is time we changed the history of our country,” remarked Clement Valentino Kundu, a Sudanese national living in Nairobi. He hopes that a common voice will emerge from the meeting.

The war has displaced about four million persons and forced 500,000 into exile, mostly in neighbouring countries.

Kenya’s foreign minister, Kalonzo Musyoka told journalists, standing alongside Garang and Taha, on Friday: “The two men are determined to bring peace to their country”.

The last peace talks collapsed after Khartoum complained that the draft agreement favoured the SPLA and encouraged the break up of the country.

Following the collapse of the talks, Sudanese government spokesperson, Elkhatib Sayed, told IPS, “we have reached a deadlock because we have criticised this framework.”

Nonetheless, Garang appears optimistic about next week’s talks. “We are ready and prepared to take tough decisions to bring lasting and just peace in Sudan,” he said on Thursday.

“We are going to Naivasha to save the process from collapsing, to resolve the deadlock so that the parties negotiate on the basis of the draft framework for the resolution of the outstanding issues presented by the mediators,” he added.

The draft document, prepared by Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the mediator, says SPLA will be given 48 percent of the revenue from oil and 40 percent of government jobs.

The document also suggests two armies, one for the north and the other for the south until southerners decide in a referendum whether to secede or remain part of Sudan after a six-year transitional period. But the government says there is no way one country can have two armies.

IGAD comprises Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan.

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