Sudan’s SPLM to join Darfur peace talks
Sept 26, 205 (KHARTOUM) — Former southern Sudan rebels are to join peace talks aimed at ending more than 30 months of civil war in the western region of Darfur, Sudanese Akhbar Al-Yom daily reported Monday.
The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) has already named a delegation to participate in the African Union-sponsored negotiations in the Nigerian captial Abuja.
It added that the team included senior SPLM officials Deng Alor, the new minister for cabinet affairs, Yasser Arman, a northerner, and Abdul Aziz al-Hilu from the Nuba Mountains in central Sudan.
“The SPLM is now part of the national unity government and it is illogical to let the National Congress party (NCP) negotiate alone in the name of the government,” the paper quoted SPLM deputy leader Riek Machar as saying.
The national unity government was formed last week, eight months after the signing of a peace agreement with Khartoum that ended more than two decades of north-south conflict that left some two million people dead.
International observers have said that power and wealth-sharing arrangements in the January 9 peace deal could be used as a model to end the conflicts in Darfur and eastern Sudan.
The SPLM has expressed sympathy with the cause of the people of Darfur and their demands for greater political and economic autonomy from Khartoum.
Sudan’s new Foreign Minister Lam Akol Ajawin said Sunday that his SPLM movement would propose a solution to the Darfur conflict to the government in Khartoum.
The SPLM “has a proposal for a peaceful settlement to the Darfur issue which will be submitted to the council of ministers for presentation to the Darfur armed movements as a government proposal”, Ajawin told reporters.
While declining to give details of the proposal, Ajawin said it was aimed at “reaching a peaceful solution to the Darfur problem in the same way the previous government solved the question of south Sudan.”
The two main rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), called on Friday for the SPLM to be included in the talks that had so far been led by the ruling NCP.
Machar said he believed “the delegation will play a major role in bringing closer the positions of the negotiating parties for reaching a final settlement.”
For the past year the AU has been trying to broker a peace deal between Khartoum and the Darfur rebels, and has deployed a large peacekeeping contingent to monitor a shaky ceasefire.
Since the rebels launched their uprising in February 2003, up to 300,000 civilians have been killed — many in raids by government-backed militias — and around two million people have been driven from their homes.
(AFP/ST)