NAIROBI, July 9 (Xinhuanet) -- Former rebel leader John Garang was sworn in as Sudan's first vice president Saturday shortly after President Omar al-Bashir signed his approval of the new interim constitution, putting a final seal on two decades of civil war.

    The following is the profile of Garang:

    Born in the remote Bor district in 1945, near the Nile River, Garang was among the few in British-controlled southern Sudan to enjoy education beyond primary level.

    After completing his secondary education in Tanzania, he went on to study economics at Grinnell College, Iowa.

    In 1970, he walked away from a graduate fellowship offer at the University of California, Berkeley, to take up arms against the Khartoum regime.

    The so-called Anyanya uprising ended with a 1972 Addis Ababa peace agreement under which Garang joined the Sudanese military, eventually rising to the rank of colonel and receiving training at the US army infantry school in Fort Benning, Georgia.

    He returned to the bush in September 1983 when the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) took up arms and fought for self-determination in the southern part of the country. The 105 Battalion of the Sudanese Army, which he had commanded in the 1970s, became the nucleus of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army, the armed wing of SPLM.

    Through the long and often painstaking negotiations between Khartoum and SPLM that followed a framework agreement in July 2002,Washington maintained the momentum that propelled the two sides forward.

    The sustained efforts culminated into the signing of the comprehensive peace accord in January 2005 in Kenya where the north and south armed conflict was literally brought to an end.

    After being sworn in as first vice president, Garang now faces the challenge of rebuilding the south and war-affected areas in the Nuba Mountains and southern Blue Nile, one of Africa's least developed regions. Enditem