Darfur JEM rebels say 27 killed by gov’t, militias

Mar 11, 2006 (ABUJA) — A rebel group on Saturday accused Sudanese government troops and their militia allies of killing 27 people and stealing livestock in attacks on villages in the Darfur region of western Sudan.

Ahmed Tugod, JEM chief negotiator.

The attacks, which took place on Friday according to the rebel group, came as diplomatic efforts intensified at the African Union (AU) and the United Nations to speed up peace talks and solve a row over a proposed U.N. presence in Darfur.

Ahmed Tugod, chief negotiator for the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) at peace talks in the Nigerian capital Abuja, gave the names of six villages in the Gereida area of South Darfur which he said were attacked by troops and Janjaweed militiamen.

“These villages have been completely destroyed. They killed 27 people, 17 are injured and six are missing including children,” he said, adding that he had obtained this information by telephone from JEM members in the area.

“They took 150 heads of cattle and 300 sheep,” Tugod said.

A government army spokesman in Khartoum said the army and popular defence forces, the official militia, had not moved into the area.

“This is absolutely false. There is always fighting in this area between the (rebel) movements themsleves,” he said. “We are not even there.”

Security in Darfur has deteriorated recently to the point that vast areas are now off-limits to aid workers.

Gereida was named as a contentious area in an AU communique on Friday, which called for the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), a larger Darfur rebel group, to withdraw from the area.

The SLA and the JEM took up arms in early 2003 over what they described as discrimination and neglect by the government.

PRESSURE TO STRIKE DEAL

Khartoum is accused by U.N. and U.S. officials of arming the Janjaweed, marauding Arab militia who have killed, raped, pillaged and driven some 2 million villagers into squalid camps. Sudan has denied that it controls the Janjaweed.

A ceasefire has been in place since April 2004 but it is frequently violated by all sides, according to the AU which has 7,000 troops in the field.

The AU on Friday extended its mission in Darfur until Sept. 30 to buy time to break an impasse over the transfer of peacekeeping duties from itself to the United Nations.

Khartoum opposes the transfer, but the AU said Sudan was prepared to accept it “after and as part of the conclusion of a peace agreement” in Abuja. The AU communique set a deadline of end-April for a peace deal to be struck.

The parties and the mediators at the talks appeared pessimistic on Saturday that the deadline could be met.

The talks, in their seventh round, have been bogged down by infighting among the rebels which took a new twist in the past week when 19 members of one SLA faction renounced their leader.

Sam Ibok, head of the AU mediation team, expressed “deep dismay” at the new split and said it was a distraction. He declined to say whether the end of April was a realistic target.

He said the response from the parties to “preliminary soundings” on proposed compromise solutions had not been encouraging. He expressed hope that new, more detailed proposals due in the coming week would receive a more positive response.

The JEM’s Tugod accused the government of inflexibility on the key issue of power-sharing. He said Khartoum was resisting granting Darfur sufficient representation in national institutions.

He added that if these matters could be resolved, the other two areas of negotiation, wealth-sharing and security, would be easily wrapped up.

A government delegate, who did not wish to be named, said rebel disunity was the main obstacle to a deal. “The question is not whether to sign a peace deal or not. The question is, with whom are you signing it? There is chaos in the movements.”

(Reuters)