AU forms panel to ease differences at Darfur peace talks
ABUJA, June 23 (AFP) — African Union mediators and parties in Sudan’s Darfur conflict have set up a working committee specifically to get past differences that have stalled full peace talks for almost two weeks, AU officials and delegates said Thursday.
The fifth round of the AU-mediated talks to end a ruinous civil war in Darfur, which resumed in Abuja on June 10, has been deadlocked over rebel opposition to a mediation role for neighbouring Chad, thus halting the adoption of a key Declaration of Principle (DOP) by the warring parties.
“The working group will begin work today. It will sit for two days. We expect it to turn in its report by Friday and then the plenary session can begin thereafter,” AU spokesman Noureddine Mezni told AFP.
The committee, being set up at the initiative of AU special envoy on Darfur, Salim Ahmed Salim, “will study all the amendments submitted by the Sudanese government and the two movements on the DoP,” he said.
War broke out in Darfur in the west of Sudan in 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.
Members of the committee include the government’s chief negotiator Magzoub Al-Khalifa and the presidents of the two rebel groups — the Sudan Liberation Movement and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) — respectively Ahmed Mohammed Nour and Khalil Ibrahim, Mezni said.
Others are Chad, with Nigeria and Libya as facilitators and the foreign partners, including the United Nations, the European Union, the Arab League, the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Netherlands and Norway.
“The idea to set up the small working group is both reasonable and welcome. It is easier when a smaller group sits down directly to harmonise differences on a particular issue. It makes things work faster,” JEM delegate Mohammed Tugod told AFP.
It was the JEM that got particularly incensed by having a team from Chad arrive as co-mediator, accusing the Ndjamena government of bias, but the SLM eventually accepted it had a necessary role.
“The AU mediation team which met all the parties in the conflict suggested that in order to minimise these differences, there should be a direct meeting between the Sudan government and the two movements. It is okay by us,” Tugod added.
“The decision to set up the working committee to harmonise the various views on the DoP is acceptable to the government of Sudan,” Humanitarian Affairs Minister Mohammed Yousif Abdalla told AFP.
“Those who have reservations about this arrangement among the parties should seek clarification from the AU which launched the idea,” he added.
But SLM spokesman Mahgoub Hussein told AFP his group needed more time to consult among its members on participation at the committee. The SLM on the other hand, has backed down on its earlier opposition to Chad, but the warring Sudanese parties have yet to meet face to face again after a first plenary session on June 13.
The DoP lays the groundwork for a political deal and reaffirms the principles of unity, sovereignty, the territorial integrity of the country, federalism, respect of diversity and the end of impunity for those committing serious human rights offences.
Later discussions will centre on power sharing, the distribution of wealth and security agreements. But the presence of Chad remains an obstacle to progress.
Since the war began, between 180,000 and 300,000 people are estimated to have been killed and 2.4 million displaced from their homes while some some 200,000 have fled into Chad.