Darfur rebels bank on AU summit for breakthrough

CAIRO, July 2 (AFP) — The main rebel group in Sudan’s war-torn Darfur voiced hope Saturday that an upcoming African Union summit in Libya would yield a breakthrough in currently deadlocked talks with Khartoum.

SLM leader Abdelwahed Mohamed A-Nur.

“We are calling on all African leaders meeting in Sirte to exert maximum efforts to find a political solution to Darfur,” Abedlwahed Mohammed Ahmed Nur, chairman of the Sudan Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/M), told AFP.

“I am calling personally on Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi to be strong and push for a decision that will put an end to the tragedy of our people,” he said.

“Millions of people have been displaced and they are still being threatened. We don’t want just another formal summit, we need leaders to make a clear decision,” he said.

The African Union, which has been the main broker in negotiations to end the two-year-old civil war in Sudan’s western Darfur region, is holding a summit in the Libyan city of Sirte July 4-5.

Libyan Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Triki said earlier this week that the crisis in Darfur — which has displaced more than two million people and left up to 300,000 dead — would feature prominently on the summit’s agenda.

AU-sponsored talks between the rebels and Sudanese officials have made little progress more than three weeks after they resumed in Abuja.

Nigerian President Olesegun Obasanjo, who also chairs the Africa Union, met separately with the two main rebel groups in a bid to break the deadlock but the pan-African body did not divulge any results.

Human Rights Watch urged the African Union to speed up its troop deployment in Darfur in order to improve the protection of civilians.

“More African Union forces need to be deployed across Darfur to protect civilians and help reverse ethnic cleansing,” the New York-based rights watchdog said in a statement Saturday.

Just over 3,000 AU troops are already in Darfur — an area the size of France — and the multi-national contingent is expected to swell to close to 8,000 by the end of September.