PrintKhartoum's refusal to honor a landmark peace accord that helped to end two decades of war with southern rebels is breeding fresh anxiety in the troubled country, which has been under the scrutiny of the international community, for another brutal war in Darfur.
Officials in the Sudanese capital have calmly refused to agree to the full implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), signed in 2005 with the former rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M), an issue now beginning to create anxiety in the Sudan.
Khartoum says the case of the Abyei district, which produces 67 percent of oil in Sudan, is an internal matter in which the UN had no business meddling.
However, this response runs contrary to the CPA. The oil-producing region is supposed to revert to the south, but the north is unwilling to share the region's oil wealth.
The Abyei issue, one of the most critical issues that led to the 21-year war in southern Sudan, remains a dominant indicator of the future of the country's fragile peace. The southern Sudan political leadership, in the hands of Salva Kiir Mayardit, has been sending simple, but chilling messages to the northerners: "We will not renegotiate Abyei and we will not let it go."
Losing confidence
Sudanese politicians say the future stability of all of Sudan depends squarely on the confidence that the Sudanese government builds on the implementation of the CPA.
"We cannot allow the CPA to die because it has direct impact on Darfur. Confidence in the government's ability to bring peace in Darfur must start from the way we implement the CPA to compliment the Darfur peace process," Kiir, who heads the semi-autonomous administration in the south, said in his speech delivered at the opening of parliament in Juba last week.
"I am alarmed, worried and deeply concerned about the status of CPA implementation. When we signed the peace accord in 2005, I felt it was a new dawn of peace and hope," Kiir stated during the address.
"Today, the feeling is not the same. If we do not act now, Sudan will reverse to war," he told the parliament in Juba, the capital of south Sudan.
There was no official reaction from the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) in Khartoum, but an official at the Sudanese Embassy in Nairobi downplayed the issue, saying all was well as far as implementation of the CPA is concerned.
"The CPA is being implemented [...] The implementation has covered over 65 percent although there are things which [still] need to be done," an embassy official told ISN Security Watch on condition of anonymity.
Oil wealth
The Khartoum government has previously denied SPLM allegations that it is stalling on the deal. The Juba-based president of the south believes that the CPA is the lifeline of Sudan, but is threatened by the Khartoum-based government's inability to implement three key aspects of the CPA, which deal with security of oil zones.
Khartoum has vehemently refused to withdraw its soldiers from the oil-producing fields in Abyei and other oil-producing zones in the south, sending a clear message to the former rebels who are struggling to transform themselves into a government.
The deployment of a joint security team - consisting of 12,000 troops from the SPLA and another 12,000 troops from the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) as stipulated in the CPA - also remains a thorny issue, worsened by Khartoum's refusal to accept the realities of the peace pact.
Sudan's ruling NCP has been accused of slowing progress on the implementation of the peace accord, and the southerners have agreed to a time-buying venture proposed by the NCP to form an executive committee of senior officials to "smoothen out issues" with Abyei in particular.
Osman Ali Taha, Sudan's powerful second vice-president, who deputizes the president of the semi-autonomous southern government, co-chairs th
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