Rival factions claim control of Darfur’s SLM
Nov 11, 2005 (NAIROBI) — Rifts deepened this week in Darfur’s largest rebel group when rival factions claimed control of the splintered movement fighting the government in the war-torn Sudanese region, officials said Friday.
One faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) said Friday their new leader Mani Arko Minawi, a former secretary general, who was last week appointed by chairman in controversial polls, was legitimate rebel chief.
They dismissed the former chairman, Abdi Wahid Mohamed Nur, who boycotted last week’s conference despite having been invited, saying his tenure was over.
“The leader of SLM is Commander Mani Arko Minawi (who was) elected in the last conference,” said Abdul Jabbar Mahmoud Dosa, who is in Minawi’s camp, told a press conference in Nairobi on Friday.
“If somebody did not attend the conference, you cannot say there is a faction… We do not call this a split,” he added.
On Tuesday, Nur insisted he was the legitimate SLM chief and welcomed his Minawi back into the fold.
Officials warn that the squabbles would affected the peace talks set to be opened on November 21 in Nigeria between SLM and another rebel group Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) on one side and the Khartoum government on the other.
This week, US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, who is currently shuttling in Sudan, told the splintered SLM that it has to go to the talks as united if progress has to be made.
Last month, Brussels-based International Crisis Group warned that such rifts undermined the ongoing peace process and threatened to extend the tragic humanitarian situation in Darfur indefinitely.
But both camps insisted the movement was more stable after the elections, with Nur saying the SLM was free to carry on with its programmes without the new leaders, while the Minawi-led group said it now had few detractors.
War broke out in Darfur in February 2003 when the JEM and the SLM launched armed rebellion against what they say is political and economic marginalisation of the region’s black African tribes by the Arab-led regime in Khartoum.
(ST)