Talks inch forward in bid end to Sudan’s Darfur conflict

NDJAMENA, April 5 (AFP) — Talks aimed at ending the conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region, which the UN says is the world’s worst humanitarian and human rights catastrophe, inched forward here Monday.

Representatives of the Khartoum government have accepted as a basis for negotiation a plan put forward by Chadian mediators that calls for a ceasefire, guarantees the safety of the civilian population, and moves to resolve the humanitarian crisis, a Chadian source said.

The rebels were still considering their response to the document, he added.

Mediators have not yet managed to get representatives of the two sides to engage in direct talks since the negotiations kicked off in the Chadian capital Ndjamena last week, when Chadian officials shuttled between the two sides.

The conflict in Darfur began in February last year and intensified just as Khartoum and the country’s main rebel group, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, are finalising a deal to end Sudan’s wider civil war, which began in 1983.

More than 10,000 people are thought to have died in just over a year of skirmishes in Darfur in western Sudan between rebels and government-backed militia groups.

An estimated 670,000 people have also been forced from their homes, many seeking refuge in neighbouring Chad.

United Nations officials have branded the Darfur conflict as currently the “world’s greatest humanitarian and human rights catastrophe.”

The UN High Commission for Human Rights said Friday it hoped to send a team within days to probe allegations of widespread atrocities by government-backed militia in Darfur.

The move came the same day that New York-based Human Rights Watch issued a report urging Khartoum to disarm and disband the militias.

The report, “Darfur in Flames: Atrocities in Western Sudan”, said Khartoum backs a scorched-earth campaign in the region and that government forces and militias of Arab descent have joined together to kill, rape and loot non-Arab civilians.

The civilians allegedly targeted are from ethnic communities from which the two main rebel groups draw their members. The groups, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army and the Justice and Equality Movement, are both represented at the talks in Ndjamena.