Sudan Darfur rebels demand vice presidential post

Dec 7, 2005 (ABUJA) — Rebels fighting in Sudan’s strife-torn Darfur region said Wednesday at peace talks they want a vice-presidential post in the federal government and called for earlier borders delineating their homeland to be reinstated.

The main rebel Sudanese Liberation Movement and the smaller Justice and Equality Movement jointly presented negotiators with demands they called “minimum” requirements. The Sudanese government delegation did not take a position on the rebel proposals.

“We can’t say we’re for it or against it at the moment, but it’s something that is going to be discussed,” said Umar Adam Rahama, the delegation’s spokesman.

The war has killed more than 180,000 people and driven 2 million from their homes since 2003.

Rebels say they want a return of the districts of Karal al Thoum, Al-A’troon and Wa’hat al-Sharafi, near the border with Egypt, claiming they were removed from the Darfur region and assigned in the 1990s to President Omar al-Bashir’s northern region by the government.

Over a year of off-and-on peace negotiations have failed to achieve any lasting settlement for the conflict in Darfur, which the United Nations has called the world’s gravest humanitarian crisis.

After decades of low-level tribal clashes over land and water in the western Darfur region, rebels from ethnic African tribes upped the fight in early 2003, accusing the Arab-dominated central government of neglect.

The central government is accused of responding by unleashing Arab tribal militias known as Janjaweed to murder and rape civilians and lay waste to villages. The central government denies backing the Janjaweed.

(AP/ST)