Bush urges Sudan to conclude peace with Darfur rebels
May 2, 2006 (WASHINGTON) — US President George W. Bush told Sudan’s president in “very clear” terms that his government must redouble its efforts to broker a deal with rebels at peace talks in Nigeria, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.
In a phone call Monday with President Omar al-Beshir, Bush urged the Sudanese leader to return his vice president to the peace talks in Abuja.
Vice President Osman Taha abandoned the talks early, frustrated with the positions adopted by the rebels, McClellan said.
“The president requested that President Beshir send Vice President Taha back to the peace talks in Abuja to help finalize a peace agreement,” McClellan said.
“The president is making very clear that we have some concerns and that we also want to see the government continue to work with the rebel groups and others to get a peace agreement,” the spokesman said, describing Monday’s dialogue between the two leaders as a “good conversation.”
“We will be looking for the government of Sudan to follow through on what the president brought up in the call,” McClellan said, adding that the issue is a “high priority” for the US administration.
“We are hopeful that they can move forward and reach an agreement. It is possible that there is some key differences that remain that need to be resolved,” the US spokesman said.
Sudan’s official SUNA news agency reported Tuesday that Beshir assured Bush of his resolve to end the three-year-old Darfur conflict that has left up to 300,000 people dead from violence and famine and 2.4 million homeless.
Negotiators from the Sudanese government and the two Darfur rebel groups face a Tuesday night deadline to reach a deal after African Union mediators gave the rebels a two-day extension.
Washington, which has accused Khartoum and its allied Janjaweed militia of genocide against non-Arab minority groups in Darfur, dispatched Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick to the Abuja talks on Monday.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Zoellick, the US point man on Sudan, met with all sides in the Darfur conflict, including a representative of the Khartoum government who stayed behind in Abuja.
But McCormack, speaking to reporters in Washington, signaled no progress. He said Zoellick was simply in “listening mode” for the moment in the push to halt the fighting between the rebels and government-backed militias.
“It is time for the international community to make it clear to all these groups they need to make the hard decisions, they need to make the hard decisions for peace so that the killing can be stopped,” McCormack said.
McClellan said that the president, in Monday’s phone call, also stressed the need for Beshir to accept a UN peacekeeping mission in Darfur to replace the overmatched African Union troops currently on the ground there.
McCormack said Washington saw an eventual peace accord as a catalyst for the deployment of an effective UN security presence.
“I think we are focusing on the Abuja talks as a mechanism to not only move the political process forward but also to move forward on the deployment of a more robust security force in Darfur,” he said.
(ST)