WASHINGTON, Dec 31 (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush is to meet next week with south Sudan's president to discuss his peace pact with the Khartoum government, which the United States accuses of complicity in genocide in Darfur and sponsoring terrorism. The White House said on Wednesday that Bush and Salva Kiir, a former rebel who is now president of the semi-autonomous south Sudan as well as national vice president, will meet at the White House on Monday to discuss the troubled 2005 peace agreement that ended two decades of civil war in Sudan as well as the situation in Darfur. "This transformational peace agreement, which ended 22 years of devastating war, continues to face serious challenges in the lead up to national elections in 2009," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in a statement. The United States has tense relations with the Islamist government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who came to power in Africa's largest country in a 1989 coup. Kiir was the leader of rebels who fought for greater autonomy for Sudan's mostly animist or Christian south from the Muslim north in a civil war that claimed 2 million lives. He became first vice president in the Khartoum government after Bashir and the rebels made peace. Officials have said he plans to run for president in elections due in 2009. The U.S. State Department has designated the Khartoum government as a "state sponsor of terrorism" since 1993. Bush has called killings in Darfur, a western region of Sudan, a genocide and denounced Bashir's government for its policies there. Foreign experts say some 200,000 people have died in Darfur and 2.5 million have been driven from their homes in nearly six years of fighting between rebels and the army and government-backed militias. Bush and Kiir will also discuss Darfur, Johndroe said. The deployment of a joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force for Darfur has lagged behind schedule. (Reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky, editing by Mohammad Zargham)
A museum worker shows to reporters a noose that will be displayed in a new Iraqi museum in Baghdad December 30, 2008. Iraq is preparing to open a new museum that ...
