Darfur rebel SLA split on participation in peace talks

Sept 16, 2005 (ABUJA) — A bitter split in the ranks of the main rebel group fighting in the Sudanese region of Darfur boiled over in public as African Union mediators attempted to coax the movement into peace talks.

A bitter split in the ranks of the main rebel group fighting in the Sudanese region of Darfur boiled over in public as African Union mediators attempted to coax the movement into peace talks.

Relations appear to have broken down between two factions within the Sudanese Liberation Movement (SLM) over whether to sit down with the Khartoum government at the Abuja talks and discuss ways of ending a 30-month-old war.

An SLM group led by its secretary general Mani Arko Minawi issued a statement in Cairo insisting that the movement does not recognize the talks and has not mandated anyone to negotiate there on its behalf.

But at the conference, the most senior member of a delegation endorsed by the SLM’s chairman Abdul Wahid Mohammed Nur dismissed Minawi’s faction as “looters” who cannot speak for the party as a whole.

Both groups insisted that they control the majority of the SLM’s armed militants, known as the Sudanese Liberation Army, on the ground.

“We definitely have the mandate of the movement to participate in the negotiations in Abuja,” said Suleiman Marajan, an SLM field commander, speaking through a translator at the Abuja conference venue.

“We are ten field commanders who come from the battlefields and we represent all of our fighters. There are ten of us here as against seven who attended the last talks,” he said.

“As far as Mani is concerned, he represents a tiny faction in the field. We have told the international community very clearly that Mani and his group are not really relevant, but they have rather been looters for the last decade.

“They want to perpetuate the chaos in the region,” he said.

Marajan said that the SLM team in Abuja was still waiting for some more senior delegates to arrive but would participate fully in peace talks.

African Union officials have said that they recognize the delegation as speaking for the SLM.

In a statement faxed to AFP’s office in Cairo, Minawi’s faction said: “The movement has not mandated anybody to participate in these negotiations.”

Minawi, who also claims to enjoy the support of the movement’s military wing, has been at loggerheads with Nur over participation in the Abuja talks.

Minawi and his supporters wanted the talks put off until after the convening of the SLM’s general conference scheduled to open on September 25 in Darfur, but Nur’s faction insisted on going to Abuja before the gathering.

“The movement, represented in its military and political institutions, does not recognize any agreement or discussions… in Abuja before the convening of its general conference,” the statement said.

“Everything that happens will mean nothing to the movement,” it warned.

The launch of the rebel uprising in February 2003 in Darfur prompted a scorched earth campaign by the government, which unleashed Arab militias against minority villages suspected of supporting the rebels.

Up to 300,000 people have died and more than two million displaced during the conflict, which the US Congress has termed a “genocide.”

Whilst praising the government’s good intentions for the talks, AU brokers have expressed increasing irritation at rebel violence and division ahead of what was initially billed as the final round of peace talks.

(AFP/ST)