Africa's peace seekers: Lazaro Sumbeiywo

Often, things would get personal. Southern delegates said things like, "My name is Michael Deng, but I was made to change my name to Ahmed - and my mother was sold into slavery," remembers Susan Page, an American lawyer on Sumbeiywo's team.

The sessions helped Sumbeiywo see that, beyond anything else, the conflict was about one simple issue: "who is in control." War, he says, is about "power."

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The stream of vitriol exchanged might have made lesser mediators give up.

In July 2003, Sudan's military leader, President Omar al-Bashir, had just read Sumbeiywo's latest draft peace proposal, and his raging response came in a public speech: Sumbeiywo could take that draft and "soak it, and drink it, and go to hell."

At the same time, the atmosphere between the two negotiating teams at a Kenyan hotel wasn't any better. "It was a horrible session," recalls Ms. Page.

At moments like that, Sumbeiywo confesses today, he wrestled with how much he'd rather be enjoying the serenity of the dairy farm he owns in Kenya's countryside. Or of how much he'd rather be with his wife and children. Already he had missed so many birthdays and holidays.

But he felt a duty to press on. So he'd go to his hotel room, sink to his knees and, as he puts it, "seek God's face."

On those dark nights, he'd begin to find solace in things like the biblical story of Joseph, who spent years in servitude and prison before achieving great things. "Even when he was in prison and forgotten," Sumbeiywo says, "he still didn't give up."

Joseph was also amazingly humble, Sumbeiywo says, "Look at Joseph's language: He says, 'I don't have solutions, but God does.' "

On his knees, Sumbeiywo would ask God for direction. After drifting off to sleep, he'd awake with a start - and a "vision" or "insight," as Page describes it - about how to proceed. In those early morning hours, he'd write out solutions to the impasse of the previous day. "So many parts" of what became the final agreement," he says, "were written during those nights."

And many times that inspiration gave him the stamina to press on, despite the vitriol spewed at him.

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The two sides were achingly close to a breakthrough late in 2004. But Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Taha was threatening to walk out of the talks. There was nothing left to discuss, he insisted. The wily rebel leader John Garang - who had led the fight against the Sudanese government for nearly two decades - was being completely unreasonable, he said.

Sumbeiywo had seen this kind of brinkmanship before. One side or the other would pack their bags and send them to the hotel lobby - only to return to the table. But this time Mr. Taha seemed to mean it. His personal plane was en route and had been cleared to land at the airport near the Kenyan resort town of Naivasha. Sumbeiywo and his staff were desperate. They started using every "back channel and front channel" they could think of, Page recalls.

And Sumbeiywo played his strongest ace: Colin Powell.

He phoned Washington, asking the US secretary of State to help.

Mr. Powell was soon working the phones, calling Messrs Taha and Garang, as he often did, within an hour of each other. "We can't miss this opportunity," Powell recalls telling them, in a recent phone interview.

Powell had leverage because ever since Sept. 11, 2001, Sudan's government was desperate to please the US. Back in the 1990s it had hosted Osama bin Laden and other terrorists. It now feared its "terrorist haven" label and economic pariah status would continue. Or worse, that the US might invade.

Powell's pressure worked. After "a few really tense moments," Page says, Taha agreed to stay.

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