Sudan says Darfur rebels are not serious to reach peace
Jan 31, 2006 (ABUJA) — The spokesperson of the Sudanese government delegation to Darfur peace talks, Amin Hassan Omar, has accused the rebel groups of being evasive and not serious about reaching a peace in Darfur.
He further said that the rebel negotiating team is incompetent to conduct the peace process. In an interview with the official news agency SUNA, Amin pointed out that a problem faces the negotiations that the three rebel factions were in a state of constant shift.
Last week, the UN special representative in Sudan, Jan Pronk, was for the first time very critical to the position of the rebels groups in the peace talks with the Sudanese government.
Amin said some names would come and negotiate under one faction and then they move and come to negotiate under the name of another faction. He stressed that the unstable formation of the negotiating groups directly affects the negotiation process.
He further said that the allegation that those groups have one negotiating stand was unfounded because those groups spent hours everyday on internal negotiations amongst themselves and then that this usually ended up with competition on tabling new demands that would impede the talks.
Pronk voiced concern about the rebels groups, which still have not made the choice between fighting and talking, especially the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA) headed by Minni Minawi,.
Amin pointed out that there was a great gap between the rebel negotiators in Abuja and the field military commanders, saying the negotiators have come mostly from European countries adding that it could be the factor of language or education that made them more capable of conducting the talks. Therefore they find themselves in a position of pressure from the field groups a matter that placed the negotiation in a shifting status because those who have the decisions do not show up at the negotiating table.
The spokesman pointed out that there was another problem facing the negotiation which was the manner in which the African mediator run the negotiations adding that there was no active role for the mediators who confined themselves to only recording and taking note and had played no positive pressing role in the negotiation in the direction that would lead to yielding results.
Amin had demanded in his interview with SUNA a revision of the negotiation methodology making it more active for the mediators in addition to reinvigorating the role of the supervisors particularly those who have influence on the rebel movement in addition to empowering the negotiators on the part of the movement against any pressures outside the negotiating table.
The Darfur conflict erupted in early 2003 when JEM and SLM/A took up arms against Khartoum to end what they call the neglect and oppression of the mainly black inhabitants of Darfur, a semi-desert region the size of France. The Sudanese government responded by backing Arab militias known as the Janjawid.
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.
(ST)