Sudan Gets A Chance

The handshake was met with cheers and ululations, a woman sang a song of peace in the Dinka language, and somebody shouted "Allahu Akbar" ("God is great").

The negotiators — representatives of Sudan's Islamic government and rebels from the animist or Christian south — had reason to smile: after 20 years of war, this is the closest they have ever come to peace. At a peace conference in Naivasha, Kenya, they agreed to split the country's oil wealth equally for the next six years, when the south will hold a referendum on independence.

For once,...

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