LONDON (Reuters) - World powers must step up efforts to ensure a landmark 2005 Sudan peace pact is fully implemented, a report said on Friday, warning that its failure could lead to Darfur-style crises erupting elsewhere in the country.
The peace agreement was signed in January 2005 by the Sudanese government and rebels, ending a 21-year conflict in the south in which an estimated 2 million people died.
A report by the London-based thinktank Chatham House, published on the fourth anniversary of the pact's signing, warned that the peace agreement was at a critical juncture.
A breakdown in the agreement would have devastating effects for all Sudan, the report said, adding that the oil-producing country faced a serious risk of fragmentation after decades of mismanaged and unequal development.
Proposals in the peace accord for a fairer division of wealth and power could stop this fragmentation, the report said. However, if these proposals were not followed through, the Darfur crisis could be replicated across Sudan, it warned.
"Failure now could lead to the sort of breakdown seen in Darfur, and time and opportunities are running out," it said.
The peace agreement -- which does not cover the war in the western Darfur region which has killed an estimated 200,000 since 2003 -- looks ever more shaky as promises made at the time come due to be met.
Elections are scheduled by July ahead of a referendum on southern independence by 2011. But core issues, such as the position of the north-south border, have yet to be resolved.
Another unknown is whether President Omar Hassan al-Bashir will face an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court over accusations of war crimes in Darfur.
The Chatham House report, by Edward Thomas, an expert in Sudanese history and politics who has worked for the United Nations in Sudan, said the Darfur crisis had diverted international attention from the 2005 peace agreement.
International supporters of the peace accord needed to "recommit urgently" to help secure its implementation, it said.
"International commitment to the (peace pact) can help carry the peace past the 2011 referendum, and help spread it to Darfur and all of Sudan," it said.
The United States, Britain and other European countries were involved in the peace process that led to the 2005 accord.
Britain's Africa Minister Mark Malloch-Brown said this week that continued implementation of the peace agreement remained "overwhelmingly in the interests of all in Sudan" and pledged that Britain would work with parties to the pact to support it.
(Reporting by Adrian Croft; editing by David Milliken)
