Washington urges agreement, Khartoum prefers signature in Africa

The American presidential envoy for peace in Sudan, John Danforth, held yesterday talks with the Sudanese vice president, Ali Othman Taha, and the commander of the southern rebels, John Garang, in the Kenyan town of Nivasha, in which he urged them an agreement before January 20th, while the Sudanese foreign minister Mustafa Othman Ismael said that the Sudanese government prefers to sign the agreement in Africa rather than Washington.

Danforth made telephone talks with the Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on the process of negotiations between the government and the rebels before starting his talks with Taha and Garang.

On Wednesday, the two sides signed an agreement for wealth and resources share and they continued negotiations over two pending issues in the agenda of the negotiations pertaining to sharing the central authority and the fate of three areas under conflict in the friction line between the northern and southern parts of Sudan.

The southern rebels calls for annexing Eibi to the south and giving the self - determination right to al-Nouba mountain, and southern Blue Nile area, while the government rejects that on the ground of the framework of the peace negotiations which limits this matter to southern Sudanese, by its declared border when the country got independence in 1956, and instead of that proposed to give self rule for this area.