The Sudanese government on Saturday signed a final reconciliation deal here with the opposition National Democratic Alliance (NDA), putting an end to years of armed hostilities between the two.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir were present at the signing ceremony.

The Cairo Agreement on Sudan National Reconciliation and Comprehensive Peace was inked by Sudan's First Vice President Ali Osman Taha and NDA leader Mohamed Osman al-Merghani.

"The final agreement will represent a genuine addition to the Sudanese political life and a key step towards restoring stability and peace, which are required for achieving development," said Ismail al-Haj Moussa, the chairman of the legislative and legal committee of the Sudanese National Council.

"Stability will be realized through the transformation of the opposition from disputes with the government into a positive participation in the government process," he told Cairo-based radio Voice of Arabs from Khartoum.

NDA, an umbrella opposition group, includes most of the major northern opposition parties and the south-based Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA)led by John Garang, all of whom opposed attempts to impose Islamic rule and fled Sudan after the 1989 coup that brought the Islamic-oriented government of el-Bashir to power.

Sudanese officials and NDA representatives have been holding talks in Cairo since Sunday, in a bid to sort out a number of outstanding issues to finalize an agreement.

The agreement was initiated in Cairo between the two sides on Jan. 16 after a series of Egyptian-sponsored talks, under which the Sudanese government agreed to share power with the NDA.

The two sides also indicated support for the North-South peace deal signed by Khartoum and the SPLA on Jan. 9 in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, which ended more than two decades of a civil war on the African continent.

The details of the Cairo agreement are not immediately available, but observers said it would further reshape Sudan's political landscape as it was reached five months after the North- South peace agreement and negotiations were under way in Nigeria to end the crisis in Sudan's western region of Darfur.

Source: Xinhua