Darfur rebels suspend poorly attended Chad meeting
September 21, 2007 (N’DJAMEM) — Rebel groups from Sudan’s violent Darfur region on Friday suspended a meeting to forge a common position for peace talks with the government, hoping more rebels would join in the consultations, a mediator said.
Darfur rebel representatives are due to meet Sudanese government officials for peace talks in Libya on Oct. 27.
This week’s meeting in neighbouring Chad, which began on Wednesday, was designed to agree a rebel negotiating position, but not all the rebel groups showed up.
“The conclusion we came to, at the request of the (rebel) movements, was to hold another meeting at the start of October to allow wider consultations,” Boubou Niang, a mediator for the African Union, told Reuters in Chad’s capital N’Djamena.
“The movements asked us to suspend the meeting and propose another which would allow more people to be represented,” he said.
Chadian officials have said five rebel groups from Darfur attended the meeting, including the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM).
But key rebel leader Abdel Wahid el-Nur, a founder of the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) whose backing is seen as key to any Darfur peace deal, was absent.
Nur has refused to take part in the peace talks in Libya demanding that international troops first guarantee security by disarming pro-government militias who are accused of raiding villages and committing multiple human rights abuses in Darfur.
A four-year rebellion and recurring ethnic violence have killed some 200,000 people and driven 2.5 million from their homes since rebels mainly from African tribes took up arms against the Khartoum government and its allied Arab militia, international experts say.
Khartoum says just 9,000 people have been killed.
Differences between the fractious rebel groups have stymied previous attempts to end bloodshed in Darfur, and the African Union and United Nations organised a meeting of rebel groups last month in Arusha, Tanzania, to start discussions.
“The consultations that began in Arusha continued here in N’Djamena and will resume at the beginning of October so the movements can achieve a common position, a common delegation, to represent the interests of Darfur at the coming negotiations in Libya,” Niang said.
(Reuters)