Darfur rebel SLA opens unity confrence without leader

Oct 29, 2005 (KHARTOUM) — The main rebel group in Sudan’s war-ravaged Darfur region opened its much-touted reconciliation conference Saturday, but a faction led by the group’s chairman boycotted the start of the four-day gathering.

“The conference has opened,” Ahmed Abdallah, a member of the organizing committee for the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) gathering, told AFP.

Thousands of locals and some 800 delegates attended the meeting’s inaugural session in rebel-held Darfur near the border with the central region of Kordofan, according to organizers.

But the SLM leader, Abdelwahed Mohamed Nur, and his supporters stayed away from the event, underscoring strong differences between him and the group’s secretary general, Mani Arko Minawi.

The meeting kicked off with a military parade in a brazen display of force by the Sudan Liberation Army, the SLM’s armed wing, as supporters carried banners with the expression: “Unity and Confrontation.”

Ibrahim Ahmed Ibrahim, head of the event’s organizing committee, announced the opening of the conference in a speech that explained its objectives and what organizers hoped to achieve.

“On top of the agenda will be issue of restructuring the movement,” SLM spokesman Mahjub Hussein told AFP.

Delegates will also discuss the group’s strategy for the future and “review all agreements signed with the government,” Hussein added.

The meeting was also supposed to reconcile the SLM’s feuding factions ahead of a new round of African Union-sponsored talks between the rebels and the government in the Nigerian capital Abuja on November 21.

“We still hope that he (Nur) comes,” Abdullah said.

Nur participated in the talks in Abuja which adjourned last week while Minawi boycotted the meeting and rejected its conclusions.

An influential think-tank warned earlier this month that divisions among the Darfur rebels threatened to derail efforts by the African Union to bring peace to the devastated western region after 32 months of conflict.

“Unless reversed, the slow implosion of the rebel movements threatens to extend the tragic situation in Darfur indefinitely,” the Brussels-based International Crisis Group warned.

Organizers said they hoped the SLM meeting will put an end to the infighting and elect a new leadership for the movement.

“The election will be democratic and transparent,” Hussein stressed, denying concerns that Minawi’s faction, which enjoys considerable support within the SLM rank and file, may try to manipulate the process in its favor.

He said foreign observers, mainly from the AU, the US and Europe, would be present to ensure that the process is truly democratic, although many of the estimated 200 guests had not yet arrived on the first day of the meeting.

Up to 300,000 people have died in Darfur since the ethnic minority rebels launched their uprising in early 2003, according to a British parliamentary report.

Two million more have been left homeless after the government unleashed Arab militias in a scorched earth campaign against minority villages.

(AFP/ST)