Rebels urge UN to take more effective actions on Darfur

Jan 16, 2006 (ABUJA) — The main Sudanese rebel movements in Darfur on Monday urged the UN Security Council to take “more effective and speedier actions with stronger content” in tackling the Darfur crisis.

The Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), in an open letter to the UN Security Council, alleged the Khartoum government “escalated its military operations” at the start of every round of talks.

Nigeria is currently hosting African Union sponsored peace talks on the Darfur crisis, but the rebel groups accuse Khartoum of trying to impose a military and security solution on the ground.

“Such circumstances require from the Security Council to take more effective and speedier actions with stronger content which would change the current tragic realities of Darfur, with Janjaweed and other government militias still robbing, killing and raping,” said the groups in the letter.

The groups called for the Janjaweed to be disarmed, for moves to encourage flow of relief materials through all entry points and for the release of all prisoners of war and political detainees.

The groups had at the weekend welcomed a UN call for its peacekeepers to take over from the embattled AU contingent in the war-torn region of Sudan.

They said that a UN takeover would reassure the rebels ahead of the January 23-24 AU summit in Khartoum and could see Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir take the chair of the pan-African body sponsoring the Abuja peace talks.

Rebel groups in Darfur, a region roughly the size of France, launched a rebellion in February 2003 against what they claimed was the marginalisation of their provinces by Khartoum.

The uprising was brutally repressed by the government and its proxy militias known as the Janjaweed. The combined effect of war and one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises left some 300,000 people dead and 2.4 million displaced.

Under the aegis of Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo, the AU has been sponsoring several fruitless rounds of negotiations between Khartoum and the two main Darfur rebel factions.

The AU, which was founded in 2002, sent its first ever peace mission to Darfur in 2004, but has often failed to quell the violence and its replacement by UN troops has been increasingly discussed in recent months.