U.N. chief backs pact for Sudan
He has made Darfur a priority but says a previous accord can bring a wider peace.
JUBA, Sudan - A peace deal two years ago between Sudan's Muslim government and Christian and animist rebels in the semiautonomous south can serve as a "blueprint for long-term peace" for the entire country, including Darfur, the U.N. secretary-general said yesterday.
Some 10,000 U.N. peacekeepers are in southern Sudan to enforce the agreement that ended Africa's longest civil war. But the settlement has been overshadowed by the turmoil of the separate rebellion in Sudan's western region of Darfur.
The 2005 pact "remains an essential - and fragile - cornerstone of peace across the whole of Sudan, well beyond Darfur," Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in Juba, the southern region's capital, on the second day of his trip to Sudan.
Known as the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, it ended 21 years of civil war between Sudan's Muslim government in Khartoum in the north and the southern rebels.
Southern Sudan still has a long way to go before it "can fully recover from decades of conflict and insufficient development," said Ban, speaking to about 200 civil society workers. A demarcation of the border between north and south in oil-rich contested zones and a slow pace of demilitarization are the main tasks ahead, he said.
Sudan had for months resisted a push for U.N. peacekeepers to replace the overwhelmed African Union force now in Darfur, where 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been displaced in four years of fighting. But Ban said Khartoum had pledged full support for the Security Council resolution that plans for 26,000 U.N. and AU peacekeepers to deploy jointly in Darfur.