East Sudan rebels vow to control Hameshkorib instead of SPLA
Dec 27, 2005 (KHARTOUM) — Ethnic minority rebels in eastern Sudan vowed Tuesday to hang on to a town due to be handed over to government control under a peace agreement with the much bigger southern former rebel group, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement.
Beja Congress deputy secretary general Abdullah Mussa acknowledged that SPLM fighters were required to relinquish the town of Hameshkorib under the terms of a January peace deal with the government but said his own movement’s militants were not bound by its terms.
“It is our town and our forces will not pull out and surrender it to the government simply because it is our town,” Mussa said.
“The SPLM are obliged to withdraw because they have an agreement with the government but we do not have such an agreement and therefore we are not obliged to pull out.”
Mussa said that the Beja Congress and its rebel allies in the East Sudan Front were making all necessary preparations for Libyan-sponsored peace talks with the government next month but warned they would stay away if any attempt were made to involve defectors to the government cause.
The ESF would “boycott the negotiations if other factions are invited to the talks” scheduled for January 17 in the central Libyan town of Sirte, Mussa said, referring to the pro-government Reconciliation and Development Movement of former rebel Osman Baunin.
Like the non-Arab peoples of Sudan’s war-wracked western region of Darfur, the Beja and Rashaidah Arab peoples of the eastern states of Red Sea and Kassala were not covered by January’s landmark peace deal with the SPLM and remain in a state of rebellion.
US and other foreign mediators have been attempting to broker peace talks with the authorities in Khartoum.
(AFP/ST)