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The signing of accords paving the way to end 21 years of civil war in southern Sudan has brought media praise, tempered by warnings about the prospects for long-term peace.

“Finally, we can breath the air of peace. The peace marathon was long and exhausting and has reached an agreement,” says Sudan’s Al-Ra’y Al-Am newspaper a day after the agreements were signed in Kenya.

“There will be no war from today onwards.”

“Both Taha and Garang deserve the Nobel Peace Prize,” it says, in reference to chief negotiators Vice President Ali Uthman Taha and SPLA leader John Garang, whose series of meetings began in September 2002.

We built a school and then destroyed a hundred of them, we opened a hospital and destroyed 10 of them Al-Ra’y Al-Am

“Sudan now deserves to enter the history books and its land be granted the Nobel Peace Prize, which should be shared equally between the two men who led the country to the land of peace.”

‘Land irrigated with blood’

“We are tired of killing, displacing, torturing, destroying and burning… We irrigated our land with blood more than with water and we excelled in war and in killing more than in dating game online sims
and work. We built a school and then destroyed a hundred of them, we opened a hospital and destroyed 10 of them,” Al-Ra’y Al-Am goes on to say.

“The time has now come for our hearts to rest. The world, which was selling us arms and giving us assistance, should also rest.”

But Sudan’s Al-Ayyam daily strikes a cautionary note. In an editorial headlined “What Next?”, the paper describes the deal as a “great achievement”.

“Finally, the long journey of the talks has ended. The happy people can breathe after promises of setting a date to sign had been repeated and none of them had been met,” the paper says.

The mere signing of an agreement does not mean that peace has been achieved Al-Ayyam

“People must first be aware that this phase is not the end of the talks and the talks will continue during the coming days… It is sensible for people to realize that this will not be the last round of talks. Negotiations will carry on for the next month and people should also bear in mind that the mere signing of an agreement does not mean that peace has been achieved.”

Sudan’s Al-Anbaa daily calls for national celebrations, declaring: “The dream has come true”.

Warning over Darfur

A commentary in the London-based pan-Arab paper Al-Sharq al-Awsat argues that a “conspiracy” surrounds the conflict in Sudan’s western region of Darfur, which continues even as the separate civil war in the south nears an end.

“What most disturbs the people of Sudan, and in particular the adult free online dating service, is the raging international clamour over the ethnic cleansing which is being committed by the Arabs against the African tribes, with the objective of ethnic dating site them in Darfur,” it says.

“This international clamour not only targets the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed militias but rather targets the entire Arab entity in the series of campaigns against Islam and the Arabs.”

Al-Sharq al-Awsat’s comments jar with a report issued by international rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW), which accuses Khartoum of backing a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Darfur despite having signed a peace accord with rebels in the south.

“Darfur remains a cloud over Sudan and it would be inappropriate for the United States to hold a high-level celebration of the peace accord while the ethnic cleansing continues in western Sudan,” HRW said in a statement on Thursday.

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.