Khartoum proposes advancing next round of Darfur peace talks

KHARTOUM, July 24 (AFP) — The Sudanese government has proposed bringing the next round of Darfur peace talks in Nigeria forward by two weeks from the planned date of August 24 date, an official said Sunday.

Sudan’s Minister of Agriculture and chief negotiator, Majzoub al-Khalifa (L), addresses the fifth round of Darfur peace talks in Abuja, Nigeria, June 10, 2005. (Reuters).

“Sudan has formally asked the African Union to contact the two rebel movements to ensure they accept to hold the sixth round of talks two weeks prior to the scheduled date,” Naguib Al-Khair Abdel Wahab told AFP.

“This move is consistent with a suggestion made by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her recent visit to Sudan” on July 21, said Abdel Wahab.

“It is up to the African Union leadership to take an appropriate decision in consultation with all concerned parties,” the African Union Mission in Sudan spokesman, Noureddin Mezni, told AFP Sunday.

He said the original date for the Abuja negotiations, August 24, was chosen because the mediators “noticed divisions among the rebels during the fifth round of talks and decided to allow them time for coordination”.

“The August 24 date has been set for the rebel movements to harmonize their positions and, moreover, to prepare themselves for negotiating the important issues of power- and wealth-sharing in addition to the security arrangements in the forthcoming sixth round,” said the spokesman.

Fighting erupted in March between the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement, prompting condemnation from the international community before the rival groups’ leaders signed a peace agreement in Libya last Monday.

Violence broke out in Darfur in February 2003 when a rebel uprising led Khartoum to unleash Arab militias known as the Janjaweed in a scorched-earth campaign.

The more than two-year-old war has claimed between 180,000 and 300,000 lives, displaced around 2.4 million people and sent more than 200,000 fleeing to neighbouring Chad, sparking one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.