Sudan ruling parties divided over UN Darfur force
May 30, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan’s two ruling parties are divided over sending U.N. forces to its violent Darfur region despite three days of direct talks aimed at tackling the thorniest issues facing the war-torn country.
Khartoum’s northern-dominated government has rejected a U.N. takeover from struggling African Union (AU) soldiers monitoring a shaky truce in the remote west. The AU said on Monday one soldier was killed and five more wounded in two attacks on its troops in Darfur last week.
Veteran U.N. troubleshooter Lakhdar Brahimi last week secured a guarantee that a joint U.N.-AU team could begin work within days to plan for a possible takeover, the first step towards transition. But on Monday the government was still divided over U.N. troops in Darfur.
“The United Nations forces were not rejected to come to Darfur, but we agreed that … they should come with a defined mandate,” said First Vice President Salva Kiir, head of the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM).
But President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, chief of the northern National Congress Party (NCP), said he had a different opinion.
“We heard the words of Salva Kiir, and his opinion is different to mine,” he told reporters late on Monday night. He declined to answer a question on why he opposed U.N. transition in Darfur.
The NCP and SPLM signed a deal in 2005 to end more than two decades of a north-south civil war which claimed 2 million lives and forced more than 4 million to flee their homes. That deal did not cover the separate three-year-old Darfur conflict, where tens of thousands have been killed.
The former foes, now partners in government, began a forum on Saturday to overcome obstacles to the implementation of the southern peace deal, including separate conflicts in the east and Darfur, where the United States says a genocide is unfolding.
Differences over key issues like the borders of the oil-rich Abyei region pushed the talks into an extra day and ate away into the night before a rather bland final communique was agreed.
Abyei, on the north-south border, contains one of Sudan’s two main oil fields. Under the deal it has an autonomous status and will choose in a referendum in 2011 whether to become part of the north or a possible separate southern Sudan.
The NCP rejects the findings of the Abyei boundary commission appointed under the deal, creating a deadlock which analysts say risks renewed conflict.
And despite three days of long consultations Abyei was not resolved. The final statement said the issue was to be decided by the presidency either by recalling the commission members to defend their report, by referral to the constitutional court, or through mediation by a third party.
(Reuters)