Warring Darfur parties say will attend peace talks

By Opheera McDoom

KHARTOUM, June 7 (Reuters) – All parties to the Darfur peace talks will attend the next round of African Union-sponsored negotiations after a 6-month lull, but leaders of the main rebel group said logistical problems may delay their arrival.

Displaced Sudanese women build a makeshift tut in Otash camp on the outskirts of Nyala town in Sudan’s South Darfur region. (AFP).

Majzoub al-Khalifa, the head of the government negotiating team, told Reuters his delegation would be in the Nigerian capital Abuja in time for the planned start of talks on Friday.

“We are ready to go to Abuja for negotiations hoping to reach a final settlement for the case of Darfur and we’ll be there on time on the 10th of this month,” Khalifa told Reuters.

Darfur’s two main rebel groups, blamed by the United Nations and the African Union for the delay in resuming talks, also expressed their willingness to attend.

The International Criminal Court on Monday formally launched a probe into alleged war crimes in Darfur, where tens of thousands have been killed and more than 2 million forced from their homes during more than 2 years of rebellion.

The United States says the violence in Darfur in 2003-2004 constituted genocide, but a U.N.-appointed commission of inquiry stopped short of supporting that declaration. It said heinous crimes against humanity may have occurred in Sudan’s vast west.

The secretary-general of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), Minni Arcua Minnawi, said he fully intended to be at the talks but logistical problems might delay some members of his team.

“I’m going, yes, and I will make every effort to go by June 10,” he told Reuters.

SLA President Abdel Wahed Mohamed al-Nur also said he would go to Abuja, but said the AU had not given them enough time to prepare their team, which was coming from the field in Darfur and all round the world.

“They told us on June 2 and we have told them in the past we need two weeks to prepare our team,” he told Reuters. “The AU just want to make it look like we are the ones delaying the talks.”

SLA NEEDS MORE TIME

Nur said the SLA had requested a delay until June 15 to collect their team. “We are a guerrilla movement, we are not a government — we rely on the AU for transportation,” he added.

The SLA leadership boycotted the last round of talks in December in protest against a government offensive launched in their part of South Darfur.

They said they would not return to talks until government forces had withdrawn from all the areas they had occupied during this operation. The AU confirmed almost two months ago that the Sudanese armed forces had carried out the withdrawal.

The smaller rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), said they would be in Abuja on time, but declined to say whether their leader Khalil Ibrahim would be present.

“We will be there with an open heart and mind to discuss the outstanding issues,” said JEM’s spokesman for the talks, Ahmed Hussein Adam. “We are not sure yet who will be heading the delegation,” he added.

None of the parties has signed or approved a draft declaration of principles circulated by the AU. The SLA said they would not look at any document not drafted during negotiations.

Khalifa said the government was in general agreement with a draft declaration drawn up at the December talks, but that the recent AU draft included some additional details which needed to be discussed. He declined to go into detail.