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08/01/2005:

"Death of Sudanese vice-president threatens peace"

Rioting was reported in Khartoum today after the former Sudanese rebel leader who signed a peace deal ending his country's 20-year civil war was announced dead in a helicopter crash.

John Garang, who became the vice-president of Sudan with the end of the conflict, died at the weekend with six of his companions when the Ugandan presidential helicopter they were travelling in crashed.

The announcement of his death has raised concerns about the future of the peace deal, signed in January this year, between the predominantly Muslim north and the mainly animist and Christian south.

The northern government agreed to a power-sharing constitution with the south that made Mr Garang vice president and the administrative head of an autonomous southern region for six years before a possible referendum on secession.
Reuters reported that in Khartoum, where 1 million people last month greeted Mr Garang as a hero at his swearing in, thousands of his southern supporters took to the streets, attacking northerners and looting shops.

"They are beating anybody they see who looks like they are Arab," Swayd Abdullah, a student, told the news agency. Witnesses reported rioting in Juba, one of the main cities in the south.
Full: guardian.co.uk

Who believes in 'accidents' anymore?