SUDAN:Diplomats urged the governing parties of north and south Sudan to exercise restraint yesterday after former southern rebels walked out of a government of national unity, bringing a two-year-old peace deal close to collapse.
The walkout also raises fresh concerns for peace talks between Khartoum and Darfur rebels scheduled for later this month.
EU officials said they were appealing to all parties to work towards implementing the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which ended one of Africa's longest-running civil wars.
"We are very worried. That is a fundamental instrument for the stability of Sudan," said Cristina Gallach, spokeswoman for Javier Solana, EU foreign policy chief.
The peace accord ended 21 years of war between the mainly Muslim north and Christian and animist south. Some two million people died and millions more were forced into squalid refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia.
It allowed autonomy for southern Sudan, handed the rebels key positions in the Khartoum government and paved the way for a referendum on independence.
The CPA, signed in Nairobi in 2005, was also viewed as a blueprint for finding peace in Darfur.
However, the deal has looked increasingly fragile in recent weeks.
Key deadlines have been missed and the former rebels of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) say there has been little progress in withdrawing northern troops from the south or on solving a border dispute.
Without settling the border issue, the key problem of dividing oil reserves cannot be completed.
As a result, the SPLM withdrew its ministers from the government on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Khartoum's National Congress Party said that the former rebels had sold out to foreign interests. Nafie Ali Nafie, adviser to the president, said: "The heart of the problem is that a group within the SPLM wants to end our partnership. This group thinks that in allying itself with foreign parties it can destroy our political project."
The breakdown comes at a time of escalating violence in Darfur. Both government and rebel forces have launched attacks in recent weeks.
The African Union's envoy to Sudan said he was concerned that peace was unravelling.