Darfur talks: Mediators step up efforts to reach truce over Chad
ABUJA, June 19 (AFP) — African Union mediators on Sunday stepped up efforts to bring the warring parties in Sudan’s Darfur region to the negotiating table after a row over Chad stalled the peace talks, an AU spokesman said.
The Abuja talks which opened on June 10 have been deadlocked because of the strong opposition of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) to Chad’s role as co-mediator, on the grounds that it is biased against them.
“We are going ahead with consultations to achieve a truce. It is not an easy task but the AU is trying its best,” spokesman Nouredine Mezni told AFP.
He said informal talks between the African mediators, foreign partners, observers and the two rebel movements fighting the Khartoum government were taking place “at the highest level possible.”
African mediators and foreign partners had produced a draft Declaration of Principle (DoP) to be adopted by the warring parties since Thursday but no progress could be made because of the row over Chad.
The AU-mediated talks resumed after a six-month break over mutual accusations of ceasefire violations. The parties have yet to get together outside initial plenary sessions.
The peace talks which began last August in the Nigerian capital have stalled several times because of mutual suspicion and disagreements over some issues.
Mezni said the AU was expecting a final submission of the contribution of SLM to a revised DoP before convening a formal meeting of the warring parties to discuss the key document.
“We have a meeting at 10:00 am (0900 GMT) with the SLM. Hopefully, they will make their presentation,” he said.
A leading member of JEM negotiating team Mohammed Tugod told AFP there would be no further talks unless the disagreements over Chad’s participation were resolved.
“There won’t be any progress in the peace talks until Chad is asked to withdraw. This has been our position and nothing will change it,” he said.
He said his group could not meet President Olusegun Obasanjo, the current AU chairman, over the issue on Saturday because the Nigerian leader was outside Abuja on a visit to a southern state.
Chad has an eastern border with Darfur and hosts some 200,000 of the 2.4 million people estimated to have been displaced by the conflict.
Fighting in Darfur broke out in February 2003 when an uprising representing the mainly black population of the region led Khartoum to unleash Arab militias known as Janjaweed, who have been accused of “ethnic cleansing”, torture, rape and intimidation.
International pressure has increased to end the war that has claimed between 180,000 and 300,000 lives and displaced some 2.4 million people, especially since the resolution last year of a separate conflict which had engulfed oil-rich south Sudan for more than two decades.
The pressure intensified on Saturday when Khartoum and Sudan’s largest opposition bloc, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), signed a landmark reconciliation agreement in Cairo that officials said would boost efforts to bring peace back to Africa’s largest country.