A settlement in the Sudan, but no end to conflict in Darfur:

To cries of "Allah Akhbar" and "Hallelujah," Sudan's Islamic government signed a peace agreement today with a predominantly Christian rebel group in the country's south that calls for the end to one of Africa's fiercest and longest-running civil wars. Several thousand onlookers - most of them Sudanese refugees who have known nothing but war in their homeland - danced with glee at a downtown sports arena here as Vice President Ali Osman Taha and the rebel chief, John Garang, initialed the pact, which has been years in the making. Yet the celebration was tempered by the fact that war continues in other parts Sudan. The conflict in the western Darfur region, involving different rebels, was not covered under the peace agreement. Whether peace in one part of Sudan helps to quell the crisis in Darfur remains a major unknown. The agreement calls for a six-year transition period to ease the combatants toward peace. It is fraught with potential complications but, if it works, it could help bring development to one of the world's most destitute and disease-ridden regions...The peace deal calls for merging fighting forces, sharing the country's oil wealth and diving political offices between northerners and southerners. Mr. Garang, the rebel chief, will become a vice president, reporting to President Omar Hassan el-Bashir, who seized power in a 1989 coup. An estimated two million people have died in Sudan's decades of war, from starvation and disease as well as bullets and bombs. Previous attempts at negotiation have gone nowhere and this round of talks, which traces its origins back to 1997, have been close to collapse numerous times.