NAIROBI, December 31 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - The Khartoum government and the main southern Sudan rebel group Friday, December 31, signed accords on two outstanding issues, paving the way for the signing of a comprehensive peace deal to end Africa's longest-running conflict.

Officials from the government and rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) signed the two protocols in the Kenyan northwestern town of Naivasha, 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Nairobi, in the presence of Sudanese President Omar El-Bashir, South African counterpart Thabo Mbeki and Kenyan Vice President Moody Awori, who represented President Mwai Kibaki, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The long-awaited move opened the way for a comprehensive agreement ending Africa's longest-running civil war in January, according to delegates Friday.

The two protocols, along with six others signed before, constitute an overall accord ending 21 years of war in the oil-producing south.

In January, both principal negotiators, Sudan First Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha and SPLM leader John Garang, will hold a ceremony where for the first time they will sign the eight deals agreed by junior colleagues in two years of talks.

“That ceremony will bring the peace accord into effect,” SPLM negotiator Pagan Amum told Reuters, adding he expected the ceremony involving foreign leaders to take place on January 7.

Thousands of Sudanese nationals, singing traditional songs and waving Sudanese flags, have gathered in Naivasha to welcome the heads of state and the signing of the agreement.

Taha, Garang and other negotiators had been locked in last-ditch negotiations to put the final touches down before the signing.

“We are not yet through. We are still having some discussion,” Mutrif Siddiq, a negotiator and undersecretary at Sudan's Foreign Ministry, said earlier.

Taha, right, and Garang sign previous peace Protocols.

Although many deadlines have come and gone in two years of talks, and the parties' perennial mistrust has been sharpened by recent tensions over the Darfur conflict, both sides are under strong US pressure to end the southern war by the end of 2004.

Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke to Garang and Taha Wednesday, December 29, expressing hope they could resolve the outstanding issues, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

The United States has been showing a special interest in Sudan, which has potential large oil reserves. Chinese companies dominate the oil sector in the country though.

US President George W. Bush signed on December 23, a bill on slapping sanctions on Sudan over the situation in the western troubled region of Darfur.

The UN Security Council has also asked the United Nations, the World Bank and others to devise a reconstruction plan, including possible debt relief, for Sudan once the country is at peace.

Khartoum has already signed six preliminary protocols with the southern rebels that would form a coalition government, decentralize power, share oil revenues and integrate the military.

The peace process has been built on a series of protocols on a variety of contentious issues such as wealth-sharing. The final two protocols are on the practicalities of implementing all these separate deals, and on a permanent ceasefire.

“It will change the political landscape in Khartoum. I think it will create a new opportunity to tackle the Darfur problem, and that is what we are hoping will come out of this,” US Ambassador to Kenya William Bellamy told Reuters.

But a leader of one of Darfur's rebel groups said that only fair deals for all the marginalized people of Sudan would bring a lasting peace to Africa's largest country.

“The agreement that is being signed today is partial agreement,” Sudan Liberation Army chairman Abdel Wahed Mohamed Al-Nur told Reuters by telephone from Darfur.

“We in the SLA inform the government and SPLM clearly that this may be a step but is in no way a solution to the problem of Sudan.”

The agreement would not cover the separate war raging in Darfur but diplomats believe a north-south deal could be a blueprint for peace there.

“The tragedy of Darfur is not forgotten in the celebration or the pleasure that we might express about seeing a north-south agreement concluded,” Boucher added.

During an extraordinary meeting of the UN Security Council in Nairobi last month, the two men pledged to sign a final pact by December 31, which is also the date the current ceasefire ends.

“We would expect that once the agreement is signed, it will lead to a national conference, a national dialogue, and it will also add momentum to the search for a solution in Darfur,” U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told a news conference.

Observers to the negotiations have said that, barring major progress, any agreements announced by Friday's deadline would be piecemeal and more an exercise in face-saving for the parties.