W.Sudan rebels say peace elusive despite deal
NAIROBI, Jan 7 (Reuters) – Rebels from western Sudan said the signing on Wednesday of a wealth sharing deal between the government and southern rebels would do nothing to help end their separate conflict near the Chadian border.
“They will be making a mistake if they think that by signing this agreement everything is settled,” Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) spokesman Ahmed Abdelshafi Yagoub told Reuters.
“(SLM/A) will continue fighting until the aspirations of the people of Sudan are realised.”
The SLM/A took up arms this year against the government in the western region of Darfur, accusing Khartoum of mass killings and marginalising Darfur’s poor. Khartoum denies the allegations.
A senior SLM/A official said on Wednesday the group’s military commander had been wounded in an ambush on Tuesday by government troops and allied militias.
Adam Ali told Reuters by telephone from Darfur that Abdallah Abkar received treatment in the field and had recovered.
The Darfur conflict has escalated despite the progress towards ending the 20-year-old civil war in the south.
Africa’s longest running war has pitted the Islamist government against rebels from the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in the mainly animist and Christian south.
Both sides were due to sign a pact on Wednesday on how to share the oil-producing country’s wealth when the war comes to an end.
The accord, reached on Monday at peace talks in Kenya, leaves two other topics to be settled before a final peace can be signed – sharing power and the status of three contested areas, Southern Blue Nile, Abyei and Nuba mountains.
SLM/A leader Abdel-Wahid Mohammed Ahmed el-Nur, in a statement issued on Wednesday in Nairobi, said as long as Sudan’s problems were ignored the country would remain at war.
“It is time for the international community to take charge and focus seriously and to question the mass killing and suffering of the Darfur people,” he said.
The SLM/A signed a ceasefire with Khartoum in September but peace talks broke down in December.
Since then observers say there is clear evidence of a military build-up in the remote, arid region with many government troops and helicopter gunships.
The United Nations estimates more than 600,000 people have been displaced and warns of an impending humanitarian crisis.