Sudan, Eastern rebels confirm peace talks postponement
Feb 7, 2006 (CAIRO) — Talks between the Sudanese government and eastern rebels that had been due to kick off in Libya Tuesday have been postponed, sources from both sides said.
The rebel Eastern Front accused the government of plotting to use the planned talks as cover for a renewed offensive against rebel bases near the Eritrean border.
A Sudanese government minister said the talks had been postponed at the request of the Libyan hosts.
“Libya has asked for postponement of the talks for two or three days allowing our Libyan brothers to make arrangements to ensure the success of the negotiations,” State Foreign Minister Al-Sammani al-Wasila al-Sammani said during a visit to the Egyptian capital.
Mainwhile, in a press statement to the official SUNA, the chairman of the government delegation for eastern Sudan negotiations, Kamal Obeid, said that the postponement of the talks between the two parties came in response to a request of the Eastern Front.
In a statement from its office in exile in Asmara, the Eastern Front accused the government of preparing “an assault on the camps of the Eastern Front at a time when the leaders and cadres are meant to be in Tripoli negotiating.”
The rebels accused the government of recruiting proxy militiamen along similar lines to the notorious Janjaweed used against a three-year-old uprising by ethnic minority rebels in the western region of Darfur.
“It is the same as the Janjaweed being deployed in Darfur,” an Eastern Front official told reporters. “This is a very divisive policy that pits members of the same community against each other.”
In January, the rebels accused the Sudanese army of launching an attack on its camps in the eastern Hamesh Koreb region, sparking clashes that left casualties.
UN troops have since been deployed to the tense region.
The peace talks — the first-ever between the Eastern Front and Khartoum — were initially scheduled for November but have been postponed several times since and had been set to begin on Tuesday in the Libyan capital.
Drawn from two ethnic minorities — the Beja and Rashidiya Arabs — the Eastern Front rebels have similar aims to their counterparts in Darfur — greater autonomy and control over their region’s resources.
An influential policy group warned in January that simmering tensions in east Sudan were a “powderkeg” that could explode into a major war, damaging peace efforts in Darfur and last year’s north-south peace deal.
The International Crisis Group called on the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, former southern rebels who are now part of a power-sharing government in Khartoum, to urge Sudan’s leadership to negotiate in good faith with the Eastern Front.
(ST/AFP)