Sudan rebels report big government attack
KHARTOUM, Jan 1 (Reuters) - Sudanese rebels said on Wednesday government forces had launched a large-scale attack with tanks and helicopters on rebel-held positions in oil-producing areas and had also bombed civilians. "The regime's forces have carried out its leader's pledge and launched a wide-ranging attack on our positions in the oil-producing areas. The fighting has continued from yesterday to now," the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), the political wing of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), said in a statement faxed to Reuters in Cairo. The rebels said the attack against SPLA positions in the town of Tam and the area around the town of Renk, about 420 km (260 miles) south of the capital Khartoum, was a serious violation of a ceasefire agreed by both sides. Helicopters bombed civilians in Leir and burned outlying villages, pillaging belongings and cattle, the statement added. Some 1,500 government soldiers launched the attack on Tam, it said. The SPLM said its forces fought back, killed dozens of government soldiers and captured another 125. It gave no details of casualties on its side or of any impact on oil operations. No independent verification was immediately available and government officials could not be reached for comment. An estimated two million people have died in Sudan's civil war, which began in 1983. It pits the government in the mainly Muslim north against rebels from the mainly Christian or animist south and is complicated by issues of ethnicity and oil. The government held two rounds of talks last year with the southern-based SPLA in a bid to end the conflict. The two sides have agreed on several key issues, including a ceasefire, but not on a full peace accord. Negotiators have agreed on the issues of religion and self-determination but not yet on how to share power and divide the country's wealth. President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who heads Sudan's Islamist government which came to power in a 1989 coup, said in remarks published on Sunday that "peace will come by the gun if it cannot come by dialogue" amid a "jihad," or holy struggle. PEACE TALKS IN JEOPARDY The SPLM statement said the attack, following the regime's sabre-rattling at the weekend, had negative implications for the peace process ahead of the next round of talks due to restart on January 6 in neighbouring Kenya. Bashir had appeared more conciliatory in a speech earlier on Wednesday, promising to work for a peace deal that ensured broad participation in decision-taking and power-sharing in a country divided by the long civil war. "The peace that we seek...is a peace for all those in both North and South, a peace which ensures the participation of all in the taking of decisions and the sharing of power and wealth," Bashir said in an independence day speech. But he gave no more details of his vision of peace in the speech, given at a rally in the southern town of Malakal marking the 47th anniversary of independence.
