Darfur talks restart in bid to solve power-sharing dispute

Dec 5, 2005 (ABUJA) — The African Union was due to bring all the delegates to peace talks on the crisis in the Sudanese region of Darfur back together Monday after a 72-hour break to allow the parties to resolve a dispute over a power-sharing deal to end the conlfict.

Mediators said they hoped the plenary session would find a solution to the row, which has pushed the seventh session of the talks close to collapse, but rebel representatives warned that they were still not ready to compromise on certain key issues.

“The government of Sudan does not want to concede the vice presidency to the south nor to Darfur. It also does not want Darfur to be considered a single region,” said Ahmed Hussein Adam, spokesman for the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).

“This is the crux of the matter as these are the issues that are of paramount importance to our people,” he added.

Government spokesman Omar Amin conceded that these issues were “difficult ones” but expressed confidence that the plenary talks session would resolve the issue.

The row over the power-sharing agreement comes just a week after the long-running talks restarted and is the first sign that this round could fall into the same stalemate as all previous attempts to resolve a 33-month-old crisis which has left 300,000 civilians dead.

Previous negotiations were undermined by regular ceasefire violations, and the United Nations has warned the Darfur region is falling into chaos, with murder, robbery and rape on the increase.

War broke out in February 2003 when the rebels began fighting what they say is the political and economic marginalisation of the region’s black African tribes by the Arab-led regime in Khartoum.

The African Union has deployed a small peacekeeping force to monitor a shaky ceasefire, but a series of peace conferences over the past year has made little progress towards a settlement.

(AFP/ST)