A peace deal 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, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said during a visit.
Some 10,000 UN peacekeepers are in southern Sudan to enforce the 2005 agreement that ended Africa's longest civil war. But the deal has been overshadowed by the turmoil of the separate rebellion in Sudan's western region of Darfur.
The deal "remains an essential -- and fragile -- cornerstone of peace across the whole of Sudan, well beyond Darfur," Ban said on Tuesday in Juba, the southern region's capital, on the second day of his trip to Sudan that will also take him to Chad and Libya.
The deal, known as the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), ended 21 years of civil war between Sudan's Muslim government in the north and the Christian and animist rebels in the south.
Ban said he discussed it on Monday with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir in Khartoum and also here with south Sudanese leader Salva Kiir and members of the southern Sudanese government.
Speaking to a gathering of some 200 civil society workers at the Juba university, Ban said the deal "is the blueprint for long-term peace in the country."
Southern Sudan still has a long way to go before it "can fully recover from decades of conflict and insufficient development," Ban said, pledging the UN will do everything possible to accelerate the recovery.
A demarcation of the border between north and south in oil-rich contested zones and slow pace of demilitarization were the main tasks ahead to achieve a solid peace, Ban said.
Since taking the reins of the UN in January, Ban has made resolving the crisis in Darfur one of his top priorities. This is his first trip to the country as UN chief.
During their talks in Khartoum, Ban said that al-Bashir had "again reaffirmed his commitment to the full implementation of the CPA" and also reassured the UN leader that his government was ready to cooperate for the deployment of a joint UN and African Union (AU) force in Darfur.
Sudan had for months resisted a push for UN peacekeepers to replace the overwhelmed AU 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 has now pledged full support to the July 31 Security Council resolution that plans for 26,000 UN and AU peacekeepers to deploy jointly in Darfur.
Ban and his UN team are also pressing to jump-start peace talks between the splintered Darfur rebels groups and the government.
Darfur violence has largely worsened since a peace agreement was signed in May last year, and UN officials have cautioned that there are many obstacles to overcome.
But they welcome the Sudanese government's strong support for both the hybrid UN-AU force and new political talks, which the UN hopes will get under way next month.
Ban also said al-Bashir had agreed to grant safe passage to Suleiman Jamous, an ailing Darfur rebel chief currently in a UN hospital, so he can fly to Kenya for medical treatment. Jamous had been unable to leave the UN hospital for fear Sudanese authorities would arrest him.
Ban also announced the appointment on Tuesday of Ashraf Qazi, a Pakistani diplomat who is now the top UN envoy to Iraq, as the new U.N. representative in Sudan. The appointment came nearly a year after Jan Pronk, the previous UN representative in the country, was expelled from Sudan for his comments on Darfur violence.
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