Bush presses rebel leader to help on Darfur peace
July 25, 2006 (WASHINGTON) — U.S. President George W. Bush pressed Darfur rebel leader Minni Arcua Minnawi on Tuesday to help implement a deal aimed at ending the violence in western Sudan, the White House said.
Bush also told Minnawi, who was visiting Washington, that his force “must refrain from insigating violence,” said Frederick Jones, spokesman for the White House National Security Council.
Minnawi’s Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) faction was the only one of three negotiating factions to sign a May peace deal in the conflict that Washington has called genocide.
The U.S.-brokered May 15 Darfur deal is deeply unpopular among Darfuris and other rebel factions, and thousands of people in squatter camps have demonstrated against it.
Jones said Bush asked Minnawi to work with other factions to try to get broad support for the peace deal.
Tens of thousands have been killed and 2.5 million forced to flee their homes from a campaign of rape, killing and looting in the remote arid region of Darfur, creating one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
The United States, the European Union and the United Nations are pressing Sudan to allow a U.N. mission to replace an ill-equipped African Union force. Khartoum had repeatedly rejected that, likening it to a Western invasion.
Minnawi has said he has no opposition to a U.N. force in Darfur. However, his credentials as a peacemaker have been questioned after he imprisoned opponents who have accused him of torture since the peace deal.
He denies the charges but a U.N. helicopter last month evacuated a senior SLA official, Suleiman Adam Jamous, from Minnawi’s Darfur stronghold to a hospital outside the region after weeks of detention. Jamous opposed Minnawi and had expressed reservations about the deal.
Critics of the May 15 peace deal say it does not meet their basic demands of fair compensation for victims, proportionate political representation and a role in disarming pro-government Arab militias, blamed for much of the violence since early 2003.
(Reuters)