End to Sudan War Imminent Despite Last-minute Delay

Last-minute wrangling between the government in Khartoum and southern rebels delayed the signing of a peace deal for Sudan yesterday but diplomats said an agreement to end 21 years of civil war was imminent.

A ceremony originally scheduled for 1pm at Naivasha, outside Nairobi where Kenyan mediators have hosted negotiations, was expected to take place last night or today as both sides haggled over details of sharing power and jobs.

After two years of talks to end Africa's longest civil war, negotiators and diplomats shrugged off the delay. "I've been doing a little shouting and yelling - everyone has been doing a little shouting and yelling. I think they will work it out," said Charles Snyder, the US acting assistant secretary of state for Africa.

The accord between the mainly Muslim and Arab north (the base for the government) and the mainly Christian and animist south is intended to pave the way for a comprehensive ceasefire and a six-year transition period leading to a referendum on independence for the south.

The Sudanese foreign minister, Mustafa Osman Ismail, said the wrangling was over laws to govern the capital, Khartoum, and the percentages of government jobs in the Nuba mountains and the southern Blue Nile.

The deal does not cover the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region where more than a year of fighting has created what the UN has said is one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.