Sudan and Libya Agree on ‘Declaration of Integration’ : Africa: For Khartoum, it points to problems with a collapsing economy and a civil war. For Kadafi, it’s one more try at a merger.

Sudan and Libya have agreed on a “declaration of integration” that will eventually lead to full unification of the two countries, Sudan’s official news agency reported Sunday.

In a statement that appeared to signal the Sudanese government’s increasing difficulty in combating a collapsing economy and a devastating civil war, the leadership of Africa’s largest country said the agreement will lead to “political, cultural, economic and security” unity if ratified by the two countries’ legislative bodies.

“Sudan and Libya have drawn up a declaration of integration that will eventually culminate in full unity in four years’ time,” Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, Sudan’s military strongman, said after returning Saturday night to Khartoum from a three-day visit to Libya.

Bashir and his 15-member ruling council seized power last June 30 in a military coup, vowing to revive the economy and bring to an end a civil war that has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands and fueled a serious famine in southern Sudan.

Yet today, the war between the mostly Muslim government in the north and southerners who follow traditional African religions has grown even worse, with the rebels having gained substantial ground in towns throughout the south and Sudan’s cost for fighting the war approaching $1 million a day.

The economy has also failed to recover. Sudan still is unable to make payments on foreign debts of more than $13 billion and has been ineligible for loans from the International Monetary Fund since 1986.

Libya, which has alternately courted unity with its giant African neighbor and supported rebel movements against the government, warmly applauded the June coup.

Though weathering an economic slump of its own, Libya has remained one of Sudan’s major suppliers of arms needed to fight the civil war, and talk of unity between the two countries first emerged shortly after Bashir’s rise to power.

Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi has been a longtime proponent of Arab unity and has frequently in the past sought unsuccessfully to merge his sparsely populated, oil-rich desert nation with his Arab and African neighbors, including Sudan, Egypt (twice), Syria (twice), Tunisia, Chad, Mauritania, Ethiopia, South Yemen and Algeria.

In every case, however, the merger agreements have fallen apart, largely because of Arab leaders’ nagging fears about Kadafi’s unreliability and his frequent support for rebel groups combating Arab governments.

Morocco backed out of a two-year-old “treaty of unity” with Libya in 1986.

But Kadafi has worked hard in the last year to improve Libya’s relations with its Arab neighbors, reopening the border with Tunisia and, late last year, renewing limited relations with Egypt after years of hostilities over Egypt’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel.