Despite some optimistic signs this week, the future of Sudan's north-south peace process still looks decidedly vulnerable, according to a new report by British think tank Chatham House.

Almost all of Khartoum's troops have pulled out of the semi-autonomous south, just in time for the third anniversary of the north-south peace deal. And though this redeployment is undoubtedly a positive sign, one look at Chatham House's latest report on Sudan shows there could well be major difficulties ahead for peace in southern Sudan.

The Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), signed in 2005, ended a 21-year war between the Sudanese government and rebels from the north. Killing 2 million people and forcing more than 4 million from their homes, the war was among Africa's longest-running.

Delays, a lack of popular knowledge about the process, an absence of agreement over core definitions, continuing disputes over oil-rich border areas such as Abyei and local hostilities could all spell trouble ahead for the CPA, according to Chatham House.

A comprehensive national census is the next step in the peace process outlined in the CPA. Delayed four times already, there are certainly no guarantees it will go ahead when scheduled in April 2008.

Further delays make fair elections more difficult to organise and threaten to create further distrust between the major players - the National Congress Party from the north and Sudan People's Liberation Movement from the south.

Actors in the south Sudan peace process must also heed lessons from Sudan's western Darfur region, say the authors. Similar tensions over access to local resources, especially land, could be replicated between pastoralists, farmers, sharecroppers and returning displaced people on the north-south Sudan border.

Rather than failing at the level of the political parties negotiating the CPA, "a more likely way for the agreement to break down (is) through an accumulation of mishandled local issues", they conclude.

"Failure to manage these local issues could prove fatal to the implementation of the CPA. If left to fester they could generate renewed conflict that could induce one (or both) of the major players the abandon the peace process."

A report by John Prendergast and Roger Winter titled Democracy: A Key to Peace in Sudan emphasises just how ill Sudan can afford delays in the election processes outlined in the CPA.

"Sudan has been torn apart by internal conflict for most of its independence, in part because of the lack of democratic processes or institutions," Prendergast and Winter say in their report for the U.S.-based Enough project aimed at fighting crimes against humanity.

The crux of the continuing success of the CPA is international community involvement, they argue. International resources and personnel are urgently needed to help the parties keep to deadlines, to develop institutional foundations and negotiate local tensions.

But with so much international attention concentrated on the ongoing crisis in Darfur, you can't help fearing there might be serious trouble ahead for the CPA.

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