Darfur violence casts bad light on Sudan talks

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- Peace talks to end the 21-year civil war in southern Sudan have resumed, with a separate conflict in the nearby Darfur region casting a shadow over what mediators hope will be a sprint to a final peace agreement.
The conflict between the Sudan People's Liberation Army and the northern government over control of southern Sudan has been distinct from the current clashes in Darfur -- which the U.S. government has called genocide.
But southern rebel leader John Garang said a peace agreement to end the war in the south would serve as a model for solving Darfur's conflict, which has pitted western rebels against Arab militias and government troops.
The talks resumed Thursday. U.N. envoy Jan Pronk, who came to the talks in Kenya's capital from the U.N. headquarters in New York, said the international community expected the government and the rebels to move quickly to reach a final agreement after two years of talks.
"There is a widely held expectation that this meeting move steadily forward on security arrangements," Pronk told negotiators, mediators and observers in Nairobi.
"This is the time to complete what we started."