Sudan rebels blocking Darfur peace, observers say
By Nima Elbagir
KHARTOUM, July 25 (Reuters) – Rebels in west Sudan are obstructing efforts to stop fighting in the expectation that the plight of thousands of refugees will force the international community to intervene, observers said on Sunday.
Attempts to reach a political solution in Sudan’s arid western Darfur region stumbled last week when the two rebel groups refused to take part in talks after the government turned down six preconditions.
A key rebel demand is the disarmament of Arab militia fighters, also known as Janjaweed. The rebels accuse the Janjaweed of killing and raping villagers and then looting and razing their homes. The rebels say the government armed the mounted Arab militia, though Khartoum calls them outlaws.
“It is obvious that the rebels feel that if they agitate enough they can force the hand of the international community and bring about an intervention on the ground,” said a Western observer in Khartoum who declined to be named.
Khartoum has said it is improving security and aid distribution in the area as it comes under increased international pressure to end fighting the United Nations says triggered the world’s worst current humanitarian crisis and forced 1.2 million people out of their homes.
Abdel-Wahid Mohammed Ahmed el-Nur, a leader of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), called for international military forces to be sent to Darfur.
“The United States, U.N., European Union and the African Union must come to Darfur because the Janjaweed are still attacking civilians and blocking relief supplies,” he told Reuters by satellite telephone from Darfur.
El-Nur did not say whether the SLM would be going to the talks in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa with the government as the U.N. announced on Friday.
CONVOY ATTACKS
The leader of the second rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), said on Saturday his group would not talk to the government until the Janjaweed were disarmed.
The head of military intelligence in Northern Darfur state told Reuters the rebels believe they will draw the international community’s attention by prolonging the conflict.
“They (rebels) want to provoke us into breaking the ceasefire and they attack (government) aid convoys because they don’t want the internally displaced people to go home,” said Mohamed Ahmed Abdallah Karrar.
He said rebel attacks complicate the government’s ability to honour promises it has made to members of the international community, the United Nations and the United States.
The Western observer said it was going to be almost impossible for the government to disarm or convince the militia leaders of the need for disarmament while the rebels continued to violate the ceasefire.
A U.S.-drafted resolution seeking to threaten oil-producing Sudan’s Khartoum-based government with sanctions remains stalled in the U.N. Security Council by council members China and Russia while a U.S. congress resolution has branded the Darfur conflict a “genocide”.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose country is Sudan’s largest cash donor, has not ruled out military intervention and his top military commander said Britain could muster some 5,000 troops for an operation.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said on Sunday that his country was also mulling sending troops if the United Nations formed an international peacekeeping mission.
As aid agencies in neighbouring eastern Chad braced for an influx of 200,000 refugees fleeing the conflict in western Sudan, Pope John Paul urged the international community to help put a stop to the bloody conflict there and in Uganda.
“The war (in Sudan’s Darfur region), which has intensified in these months, has brought more poverty, desperation and death,” the Pontiff told pilgrims gathered at his summer residence at Castelgandolfo, south of Rome.
“How can we remain indifferent? I appeal again to the authorities responsible and to international organisations so that they don’t forget these, our sorely tested brothers.”
(Additional reporting by Amil Khan in Cairo)