Sudanese rebel group calls for deadlines to meet agreements
Sudanese rebel group calls for deadlines to meet agreements
Mar 2, 2006 Abuja(dpa) The rebel Sudan Liberation Movement and Army (SLMA) on Thursday in Abuja called on the African Union (AU) and other international partners to set deadlines for parties to the Darfur conflict to meet agreements already reached on security and humanitarian issues.
“This is the only step that will usher in progress at the Abuja peace talks,” Minni Minnawi, chairman of the SLMA, said.
He decried threats that the UN or NATO troops would be made to replace AU peace-keeping troops in Darfur if progress was not made at the Abuja peace talks and said “ordinarily, nobody wants the presence of foreign troops on its soil.”
Jan Pronk, the UN special envoy in Sudan, said on Tuesday in New York that there was “an atmosphere of fear and conspiracy” in Khartoum that Sudan might become another Iraq or Afghanistan if the West sent in troops to quell the ethnic conflict in Darfur.
Pronk said he spent time trying to convince people in Darfur to accept a UN force, but to send in NATO troops would be a “recipe for disaster.”
Minnawi said it was unfortunate that the 6,000-strong AU troops in Darfur “lack a strong mandate, resources, capabilities and logistics for the peace-keeping assignment.”
“It is, however, left for the international community to decide whether or not to transfer the AU peace-keeping mission’s mandate to another organization or to expand the mandate,” he said.
He said the two rebel groups at the Abuja talks – the SLMA and the Justice and Equality Movement – were prepared to reach agreement but Khartoum was constantly ensuring that progress was not possible either by infiltrating the rebel movements to destabilize them or by not keeping to the agreements signed, thereby delaying the peace process.
Challenging Khartoum to be more serious and committed to the Abuja peace talks, he added that “we believe the Government of National Unity is not serving any purpose of national unity.”
Pronk had noted in New York that Arab militiamen riding horses or camels, backed by government army trucks, had continued to attack villages in Darfur, which had become an “extremely difficult” place.
The militias have been fighting with the SLMA for control over Darfur since 2003, killing at least 180,000 people, according to the UN. Human rights groups put the death toll at over 300,000. Another two million people have been displaced, some into neighbouring Chad.