Darfur peace talks to resume next week – AU
Nov 25, 2005 (ADDIS ABABA) — A new round of Darfur peace talks is to begin next week in Nigeria after a delay caused by splits in the troubled western Sudanese region’s main rebel group, the African Union (AU) said Friday.
A senior official with the pan-African body said the seventh-round of AU-sponsored negotiations aimed at ending the 33-month-old Darfur conflict would begin in the Nigerian capital on Sunday or Monday.
“The talks will resume Sunday or Monday as soon as all the parties have arrived in Abuja,” said El Ghassim Wane, the director of the AU’s Conflict Management Center.
The talks had been due to start on November 21 but were postponed for “logistical reasons” amid a leadership rift in the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM).
Wane said delegates from the SLM and the smaller Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) would travel on Saturday to N’Djamena in neighboring Chad before joining AU mediators and Khartoum’s representatives in Nigeria.
The announcement came three days after the AU Peace and Security Council threatened to impose sanctions on the SLM, which it said was hindering the peace effort in Darfur.
The council said the SLM leadership bore a “heavy responsibility not to prolong the suffering of their people in Darfur” and demanded that they “put aside their differences and personal ambitions and focus on the negotiations.”
In a statement released on Tuesday, the council said it would consider “appropriate measures, including sanctions … against any party that will undermine or constitute an obstacle to the peace process in Darfur.”
As many as 300,000 people are estimated to have been killed in Darfur since an uprising by rebels from the SLM and JEM erupted more than two years ago, prompting harsh retaliation by pro-Khartoum militias.
The combined effect of the fighting and a dire humanitarian crisis in the region has displaced more than two million others.
The war broke out February 2003 when the JEM and the SLM began fighting what they say is political and economic marginalisation of the region’s black African tribes by the Arab-led regime in Khartoum.
(AFP/ST)