Mediators to restart Sudan peace talks despite Chad hitch

ABUJA, June 21 (AFP) — African Union (AU) mediators trying to bring peace to Sudan’s Darfur region, wracked by conflict and humanitarian crisis, said they would get talks going again Tuesday despite a stalemate over the participation of Chad.

Sudanese government chief negociator Majzoub al-Khalifa (L) chats with his Nigerian counterpart Babagana Kingibe in Abuja. (AFP).

“We partners, Sudanese government and observers, have unanimously adopted a work program drafted by the AU and the talks are scheduled to begin Tuesday” in a plenary session, the head of Sudan’s delegation, Magzoub Al-Khalifa, confirmed to AFP.

“The plenary session will definitely resume on Tuesday,” an AU official said.

Fighting has raged in Darfur since February 2003, when local armed groups launched a rebellion in the name of the region’s black African tribes, alleging discrimination and persecution by Khartoum’s Arab-dominated government. Millions of people have fled their homes.

The talks have been stalled for more than 10 days over opposition from Darfur rebels to bringing neighbouring Chad, which has become home to tens of thousands of refugees, into the talks as co-mediators on the grounds of bias.

After lengthy negotiations, the most resistant of the two Darfur rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), dropped its opposition to Chad’s participation.

“It is the considered view of the SLM negociating delegation that it has come to Abuja not to wade into the controversy or argument of whether Chad should be mediator or not, but to help negotiate and achieve peace,” the group said late Monday.

“Any attempts at this stage to remove Chad from the process is not in the overall interest of peace in Darfur,” said an SLM statement signed by the group spokesman, Mahjoub Hussein.

“AU special envoy for the Darfur peace talks, Tanzanian Salim Ahmed Salim, has consulted with the mediators, the partners, the observers and the SLM and they have agreed to move the talks forward”, AU spokesman Noureddine Mezni told AFP.

“On Tuesday we are going to finalise discussion on the declaration of principles (DoP), a key element in the talks”, he said adding that “AU is very interested in advancing the talks”.

The declaration of principle, the basis for a future accord, reaffirms Sudan’s unity and territorial integrity, respect for its ethnic and religious diversity and calls for an end to impunity for human rights violators.

AU mediators want these points agreed on before tackling the sensitive issues of power sharing, distribution of wealth and security.

The other rebel force, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), said it would only comment on whether it would participate in further talks after its position paper on the DoP which was submitted to AU late Monday, has been debated.

The parties were to discuss the JEM document at a meeting scheduled at 10:00 am (1000 GMT) on Tuesday after which the plenary session is expected to resume, delegates said.

“We are happy over AU mediation in the talks”, Magzoub told AFP.

The stand-off over the involvement of Chad — whose long border with Sudan runs along the western limit of Darfur — is the latest in a series of disputes to have bedevilled the AU’s stop-start dialogue.

Since the war began, between 180,000 and 300,000 people are thought to have been killed and 2.4 million displaced from their homes. Some 200,000 have fled into Chad.

Last year, the African Union deployed a small military observer force to Darfur and began a series of meetings in Abuja between the government and two rebel groups in order to seek a ceasefire and a political settlement.