Sudan's government and southern rebels hammered out final details on Wednesday to a deal paving the way to end Africa's longest-running civil war, delaying a planned signing ceremony in Kenya.
After a decade of off-on peace efforts, the deal should open the way to a full cease-fire and implementation pact to end a war that has bisected Africa's biggest country for two decades.
Kenyan government officials and foreign dignitaries including Norwegian International Development Minister Hilde Frafjord Johnson gathered at a lakeside hotel near Nairobi for a ceremony that had been scheduled for 1 pm (1000 GMT).
Three hours after that time visiting US Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Charles Snyder emerged from a meeting with the negotiators and pronounced himself optimistic.
"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," Snyder told reporters. Chief mediator Lazarus Sumbeiywo appealed for patience.
"The parties have one or two clauses that we need to go over before we can have a signing ceremony...The parties have promised us they will sign today so please bear with us," he said.
The deal would be a major step to ending Sudan's 21-year civil war, but does not cover another conflict raging in Sudan's western Darfur region, where more than a year of fighting has created what the United Nations has branded one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.
At about the same time Snyder made his remarks, Sudan Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail told reporters in Khartoum: "The issues of dispute are the percentages (of government jobs) in the two areas of the Nuba Mountains and the Southern Blue Nile and what is related to the national capital and the laws that will govern it."
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