A peace deal to end Africa's longest civil war was finally signed last night. The fighting in Sudan, which has raged intermittently for nearly 50 years, has claimed two million lives.
Decades of recrimination were put aside as the two factions inched towards agreement on how to share power in a new transitional government, as well as on the future of three contested regions - the final hurdles in over a year of tortuous negotiations hosted by the Kenyan government.
The conclusion of the fraught negotiations - in which the two sides have come under intense pressure from the United States - hands President George W Bush a rare foreign-policy boost in a Muslim country.
If Bush has too many more of these "rare" foreign-policy successes in Muslim countries (Libya, Iraq, reform movements in Iran and Syria gaining steam, and a statement of principle from the Arab League to move toward democracy), in a hundread years people are going to be wondering what all those references about unrest in the Middle East in the late 20th, early 21st centuries were about.
Doc Rampage should be happy.
Update: I read the article more carefully. It appears that this deal doesn't cover the conflict in the Darfur region, which was what the Doc was concerned about. I'm hoping that bringing resolution to the main conflict in Sudan will calm things down in Darfur.
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