President Omar Beshir’s landmark meeting with SPLA leader Dr John Garang de Mabior in Nairobi on April 2 seemed to indicate that peace was only weeks away. The two rivals "expressed hope on reaching a final agreement by the end of June". They also "reaffirmed their commitment to honour the agreement reached between the parties particularly the Machakos Protocol and the memorandum of understanding on the cessation of hostilities and to facilitate unrestricted delivery of humanitarian assistance."

The meeting between Bashir and Garang "was very important indeed because they are the ones who hold the key to a final agreement," said Gen. Lazaro Sumbeiywo, Kenya’s chief mediator. Yet bringing a swift resolution to Africa’s longest-running conflict might still be an uphill task despite the diplomatic progress.

Sudan’s peace process has managed to rumble on, despite walk outs, breakdowns, continued fighting in the oilfields, a new rebellion in Darfur and countless other difficulties. There has recently been unprecedented international resolve to reach a swift resolution to a decades-old conflict – May 16 sees the twentieth anniversary of the latest civil war.

Both sides are terrified of upsetting the Americans and neither wants to bear the blame for the collapse of the peace process, but the outbreak of hostilities with Iraq has changed the political landscape. President Omar Bashir has done much to distance his regime from its previous connections with radical Islam and international terrorism. In the early nineties, Carlos the Jackal, Osama bin Laden, Abu Nidal and other terrorist leaders resided in Khartoum. Sudan was designated as a state sponsor of terrorism in 1993 and still remains on the US terror list.

In late April President Bush has to report to Congress as to whether Khartoum has made serious steps towards a peaceful resolution of the conflict. This was stipulated in the formerly moribund Sudan Peace Act, which was suddenly passed in a matter of days following September’s complete ban on aid flights, which Khartoum only rescinded after rebel agreement to a general cessation of hostilities. The act offers the rebels US$100 million a year for the next three years if Khartoum fails to negotiate a workable settlement.

Yet Khartoum is currently facing the relaxation of its human rights status at the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva. Gerhart Baum, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on human rights in Sudan told the Commission on 28 March: "I have seen no fundamental change since my last visit, in spite of further commitments by the government." He added: "The country remains under the iron-tight grip of the omnipresent security apparatus, which continues to enjoy virtual impunity." Khartoum’s failure to rein in the destruction caused by its militias around the oil fields, despite October’s cease-fire has caused particular concern.

A March 2002 agreement previously pledged the Government and the SPLA not to target civilians has been monitored by a US-supplied Civilian Protection Monitoring Team. The CPMT recently concluded that the government and allied militia had committed a number of attacks targeting and killing civilians in the oil rich areas south of Bentiu in January and February 2003.

"The positive changes in Sudan have taken place largely as a result of international pressure to make meaningful moves to end human rights abuses," claim Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. "The UN must not end human rights monitoring now in the midst of the transition period, especially when the peace protocol signed at Machakos over eight months ago has not yet materialised in a peace agreement."

"Monitoring and public reporting is the one way to end abuses and impunity," the organisations said. "Now is the time to increase UN human rights monitoring, not to end it". The talks, now relocated from Machakos to the Nairobi suburb of Karen, spent weeks haggling over the agenda and under whose auspices they should be held.

The last round dealt with the highly contentious issue of the "marginalised areas" of north Sudan. Khartoum refuses to discuss anything outside the 1956 boundaries of south Sudan under the auspices of IGAD, the regional body theoretically convening the negotiations. The infinitely patient General Sumbeiywo instead convened the talks under Kenyan chairmanship. However, no agreement was reached as both sides claimed the disputed areas as there own.

While Khartoum refuses to concede self-determination to the people of the Nuba Mountains, southern Blue Nile and Abyei districts, the mediators realise that the issues surrounding the marginalised areas must be resolved before finalising agreements on sharing power and wealth and security arrangements for the interim period at the next round of talks. Where exactly the border lies is crucial to all three.

"It has been our consistent belief that there cannot be a genuine peace in the Sudan unless a comprehensive approach to the Sudanese conflict is adopted," said Nhial Deng Nhial, SPLM/A chief negotiator. "A piecemeal approach will not bring about a just and lasting peace in the country," he remarked.

The talks are at a critical stage. If they reach no satisfactory solution for the conflict areas in the North, the entire Southern peace process could unravel. If the SPLA compromises by sacrificing its claims on the marginalised areas without gaining them sufficient guarantees, the Nuba cease-fire could easily breakdown, in turn destabilising the rest of the agreement. Nuba vision mines Last year’s Swiss-sponsored cease-fire agreement has finally opened the area to the outside world after fourteen years of blockade and a steady trickle of relief supplies and market goods has replaced the bombs and bullets normally visited on the region. Antonovs now fly in with relief supplies rather than cluster bombs.The Nuba Mountains cease-fire is supposed to be a test case for peace in Sudan and is heavily supervised by an in international monitoring team reporting to a Joint Military Commission. Officers from the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army operate alongside their government counterparts, supervised by international observers. In theory, people were supposed to be won over to the peace-process once they saw the material benefits bestowed by the cease-fire. As most of the area’s roads are still heavily mined the monitors venture out from their scattered bases by helicopter but serious humanitarian interventions must wait until the roads are cleared.

In an initial rush of optimism many aid organisations competed to be the first to operate in this newly accessible region – often transferring resources from the more militarily volatile south Sudan. However most new programmes have been beset by delays and few of these benefits have actually materialised.

One advantage of the years of isolation has been to hone Nuba traditions of self-reliance. Many people are concerned that a massive influx of relief aid will replace resilience with dependency. The SPLA still insists the area is serviced via Kenya and doesn’t want everything being trucked in from north Sudan, despite the unwillingness of donors to finance the massive costs incurred by airlifts. And, until a comprehensive peace deal is achieved, the SPLA insists certain strategic roads remain mined. The UN’s Mine Action Service is planning to map and mark minefields and safe areas to enable farmers to return to their fields but for the time being only certain aid access roads are being demined. It’s quite a cosmopolitan affair – A Danish aid organisation - Dan Church Aid - is deploying a South African mine-detecting dog team alongside a group of Kosovan deminers. They’ve also began to create a local mine action capacity, training deminers from both rebel and GoS positions.

In the nominally neutral area of El Bati - situated in the no-mans land between the GoS peace village of Umm Sirdiba and the rebel village of Tangal, the training camp is one of the few tangible signs of the cease-fire. The former combatants train together, play dominoes and generally get on pretty well together, although the two teams each have separate halves of the barracks where they often taunt each other by whistling their respective marching songs. Both sides maintain the fiction that their trainees are all civilians, whilst complaining to the JMC that their rivals are all former military. Umm Sirdiba was originally proposed to be the main site for the mine clearance camp, I meet old friends and former students and as we chat about old times the cook begins to take a keen interest in our discussions. His links to security become more apparent when I joke that former National Islamic Front ideologue Hassan el Turabi is only in jail to convince the Americans that Sudan has severed all links with Bin Laden.

Khartoum’s current strategy is to distance itself from Al Quaida and Saddam Hussein and to convince Washington that it is serious about peace. However, its reluctance to compromise on the Nuba Mountains and the other contentious areas of Abyei and Blue Nile at the current peace talks appears likely to jeopardise the cease-fire.

One can understand the tensions: if the area returns to war, humanitarian deminers will no longer be required – not least because no more aid will be trucked in the renewed blockade that will be imposed if the cease-fire beaks down. All the abandoned army garrisons are known to be ringed by mines. Almost all roads are still closed. How much of the rest of the area is actually contaminated remains open to question but few villagers believe it is safe to return to the fertile valleys and want the agricultural lands to be a key objective for mine clearance. The UN Mine Action Service, UNMAS regards the roads as the priority and thinks the rest of the problem may be overstated, but points out that general minefield mapping and marking can’t take place until the main communications routes are safe to use.There were fears from some quarters that the predominantly southern-based SPLA might sacrifice their Nuba positions in exchange for independence for the south but local enthusiasm was greatly enhanced by December’s All Nuba Conference held in Kauda. SPLA leader, John Garang, on his first ever visit to this contested area, pledged that his movement would never abandon the Nuba. The SPLA insists that the "marginalised areas" be governed alongside the south during the interim period, whilst Khartoum refuses even to discuss them at the same peace talks.

In the meantime the JMC monitors attempt to enforce an uneasy peace which has yet to find a political solution and has yet to provide the promised material benefits. If nothing else, the JMC has at least brought electricity to Kauda. During the siege the mountains were one of the darkest places on earth, but now most of the town is lit up by the JMC compound’s perimeter lighting, allowing students from the new teacher training college to study at all hours. Dozens of kids sit around the perimeter eager to use this novel sensation of being able to read at night.

I’ve heard it’s changed quite profoundly since I taught there before the war. People marvel at the luxuries contained within. Even the toilets have air-conditioning, a world away from the primitive facilities that used to exist and somehow an apposite metaphor for the monitors’ distance from the realities on the ground.