Darfur mediators urge to make current peace talks “decisive”
Jan 20, 2006 (LAGOS) — The African Union (AU) mediation team Friday urged parties to the talks in the Nigerian capital Abuja on the Darfur conflict to make the current round “decisive”, an official AU statement said.
“It is the intention of the AU to assist the Sudanese parties in making the 7th round of the talks the decisive round, in line with the commitment they had earlier made at the end of the 6th round in Abuja,” said the statement.
“The AU mediation strongly appeals to the Sudanese parties, the partners, observers and facilitators involved in the talks to engage in serious negotiations and to refrain from all actions and statements” that could be “unnecessary distractions.”
Observers note that since the current 7th round resumed late last year, the AU-sponsored talks have been slow in concluding on issues of power and wealth sharing as well as governance in Sudan.
The AU statement, signed by the organisation’s spokesman in Abuja, Noureddine Mezni, also denied a report that there were plans to move the venue of the peace talks from the Nigerian capital to Darfur.
Media reports had allegedly quoted the special representative of the UN secretary general to Sudan, Jan Pronk, as saying that a new strategy to bring peace to Darfur would entail relocating the venue of the talks to the Darfur region “to guarantee the participation of tribal communities in the talks,” the statement said.
Fighting in Darfur began in February 2003 between black rebel groups and the Khartoum government, supported by Arab Janjaweed militias. It is estimated to have cost some 300,000 lives and displaced more than two million refugees.
Meanwhile, the two rebel movements in Sudan’s western Darfur region, the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), announced on Friday in N’Djamena they were merging to create a single alliance.
Both the SLM and the JEM said they opposed the choice of Sudan to head the AU at its summit meeting in Khartoum on Monday.
The AU chief mediator in the Darfur talks, Salim Ahmed Salim, is expected to arrive Nigeria Saturday after his visit to New York where he briefed UN officials on progress made so far in resolving the crisis, AU officials said.