AU mediators say not informed of Darfur rebels alliance

Jan 21, 2006 (LAGOS) — African Union (AU) mediators in the Sudan’s Darfur crisis said Saturday they had not been officially informed of a merger of the two main rebel groups.

The two movements in Sudan’s Darfur region, the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), announced on Friday they were creating a single alliance.

“The AU is yet to get any official document that the SLM and JEM have merged to form an alliance,” AU spokesman at the Sudanese peace talks in Abuja, Noureddine Mezni, told AFP by telephone.

“The two movements have agreed to join and coordinate all political, military and social forces, their international relations and to double their combat capacity in a collective body under the name, the Alliance of Revolutionary Forces of West Sudan,” the SLM and JEM had said Friday in a press statement.

“This union will strengthen the solidarity, cohesion and unity of the people of Sudan in general and that of the west in particular,” the document said.

Meanwhile, the commission on power-sharing, one of the three negotiating frameworks for the current seventh round of talks, continued its deliberations Saturday in Abuja, Mezni said.

The commission resumed formal discussions on Thursday after the Eid-El Kabir recess and following separate briefing sessions and consultations by the AU mediation team with all the Sudanese parties, representatives of the co-mediators, facilitators and international partners, he said.

While acknowledging slow pace of work in the talks generally, AU officials said that some progress had been made since the resumption of the current round late last year.

“We have made progress in some areas. For example, there is a preliminary accord by parties for a Darfur region, while positive progress is also being made on the controversial issue of Sudan’s presidency,” one of them said.

The AU mediation team urged parties to the talks Friday in a statement to make the current round “decisive”.

Fighting in Darfur began in February 2003 between black rebel groups and the Khartoum government, supported by Arab Janjaweed militias. It is estimated to have cost some 300,000 lives and displaced more than two million refugees.

(STAFP)