UN envoy in Eritrea seeking end to rebellion in eastern Sudan

ASMARA, July 14 (AFP) — The UN special envoy to Sudan, Jan Pronk, opened talks here Thursday aimed at resolving a burgeoning rebellion in eastern Sudan that has raised fears of a new Darfur-like conflict in the vast country, officials said.

President Isaias Afwerki receives UN special envoy for Sudan, Jan Pronk, March 8, 2005. (ERINA) .

Pronk, who arrived here from Khartoum where he vowed to pursue peace efforts in the east, met with Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki and Foreign Minister Ali Seid Abdella and was to see leaders of the Eastern Front rebel group on Friday.

Eritrean Information Minister Ali Abdu said the topic of the Isaias-Pronk talks was the tense situation in Sudan’s eastern Red Sea state where the rebels, who maintain an office in Asmara, launched their first offensive last month.

There were no immediate details of the meeting but on Wednesday Sudanese media reports quoted Pronk as saying he would meet Isaias “because he is in a position to help persuade the leaders of the eastern opposition movements” to move to peace.

Those reports also indicated that Pronk was hopeful negotiations between the two sides could begin in August in Nairobi where a landmark peace deal ending Sudan’s 21-year north-south civil war was signed in January.

A spokesman for Pronk said the UN envoy would be following up on UN contacts with the Eastern Front made last month after the rebel offensive and reports, denied by Khartoum, of bombing of civilian targets in response.

Eritrea’s hosting of an Eastern Front office has poisoned already poor ties between Asmara and Khartoum which last month warned that the common border could “explode” if Eritrea continues alleged military support for the rebels.

Eritrea has denied any military backing for the group, which was founded in February by the opposition Beja Congress and Free Lions movements, and accused Khartoum of committing atrocities in eastern Sudan as well as in Darfur.

A senior official with the Eastern Front in Asmara confirmed that Pronk would be meeting with the group’s leadership on Friday but held firm to the rebels demand for Khartoum to meet two conditions before it would sit down for negotiations.

“We want to know if he has new ideas or new plans,” the official, Salah Barqueen, told AFP. “Once we have heard him, we will give our reply. (But) before we hold peace talks with Khartoum we still have our two conditions.”

Those conditions include the bringing to justice of Sudanese troops who killed between 14 and 36 Beja Congress supporters in clashes during demonstrations in Port Sudan in January and an end to harrassment of Eastern Front members in Sudan.

Khartoum must stop “putting high pressure against our people and our movement,” Barqueen said. “There are very strict checkpoints and the emergency situation has not been removed (in the east).”

Like the ex-southern rebels and their counterparts in western Darfur, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), the Eastern Front complains of marginalization by the government in Khartoum.