Kadhafi takes role as mediator with Darfur rebels

TRIPOLI, Oct 18 (AFP) — Darfur rebel groups who were sidelined from an African summit on their 20-month-old conflict with Khartoum stayed on in Tripoli Monday for talks with Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi.

A statement issued overnight after the leaders of Sudan, Libya, Nigeria, Chad and Egypt held a mini-summit here said the Kadhafi was tasked with continuing consultations with the two main Darfur rebel groups.

“The leader of the Libyan revolution has received a mandate to establish contacts with the parties involved in Darfur and pursue these contacts until a permanent solution to the Darfur crisis is reached,” the statement read.

Representatives of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), who were not invited to Sunday’s summit, told AFP Sunday they were staying in Tripoli for talks with Libyan officials.

Direct talks between the rebel groups and the Sudanese government are due to resume on October 21 in Nigeria, which currently chairs the African Union (AU).

The two groups expressed concern that the Tripoli gathering — after which the five leaders pledged a solution to the crisis but rejected any foreign intervention — was only designed to give Khartoum breathing space by keeping sanctions at bay.

Under the mounting threat of UN-imposed sanctions on Khartoum for its responsibility in Darfur’s humanitarian disaster, the one-day summit was hastily convened in Libya, whose leader has cast himself as the champion of African unity.

The African Union has spearheaded international efforts to resolve the crisis and is in the process of deploying a 4,500-strong force from around five African countries to Sudan to oversee the peace efforts in Darfur.

The five leaders said in a joint statement that Darfur was a “purely African issue” and the AU’s peacekeeping mission — one of its very first — will be a test of the 53-member pan-African body’s ability to police the continent itself.