Southern Sudan Party Quits Government

United Nations special envoy to Sudan, Jan Eliasson, left, speaks during a joint press conference with Ambassador Sam Ibok, senior advisor to theAfrican Union, in Khartoum, Sudan, Thursday Oct. 11, 2007. Eliasson, who is heading-up the peace process in Darfur, said that a pause in peace negotiations between Khartoum and the rebel factions embroiled in a Sudanese civil war, envisaged to begin on Oct. 27 in Libya, would only lead to more violence.(AP Photo/Abd Raouf) (Abd Raouf - AP)

JUBA, Sudan -- Southern Sudan's former rebels on Thursday suspended participation in the central government, accusing it of failing to abide by a peace deal in a dispute that threatens a rare success in the troubled nation.

U.S. officials and other international observers have warned that a 2005 peace agreement between Sudan's north and south was in danger of unraveling, threatening a new civil war that could also dash hopes for ending a separate conflict in western Darfur.

The Sudan People's Liberation Movement said it was withdrawing its 18 Cabinet ministers, including the foreign minister and the vice president, and three advisers.

Pagan Amum, the party secretary-general, said the decision was not intended to renew conflict but to push for better implementation of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

"We are working to avoid a return to war," he told The Associated Press. "We want to make sure the CPA is implemented rather than dishonored."

The People's Liberation Movement accuses the Khartoum government of multiple breaches of the peace deal, including not sharing oil wealth, failing to pull troops out of the south, and remilitarizing contested border zones where the main oil reserves are located.

The 2005 agreement ended two decades of civil war between the Arab and Muslim-dominated north and the mainly Christian and animist black southerners. The war, Africa's bloodiest conflict, left some 2 million people dead in fighting, related disease or famine.

Amum urged the U.N. Security Council to meet to examine the peace deal's problems. "These aren't delays, these are flagrant violations," he said.

There was no comment from the government in Khartoum, which seemed to have been caught by surprise by the decision.

Sudan has been dominated by a small elite of northern Arab tribes since its independence from Britain in 1956.

The U.N.- and U.S.-brokered agreement that ended the southern civil war was a diplomatic victory and fueled hopes that the Darfur conflict could be resolved.

But the 4-year-old crisis in Darfur has only worsened between government forces and ethnic African rebels. The government is accused of unleashing Arab militias, known as the janjaweed, blamed for atrocities against ethnic African villagers. More than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been driven from their homes in Darfur.