Darfur peace talks threatened by rebel SLM’s split
Mar 6, 2006 (ABUJA) — Another leadership squabble has emerged within the main rebel group fighting in Sudan’s Darfur region, and mediators in the conflict said Monday the new division threatens Nigeria-hosted peace talks.
Numerous rounds of peace negotiations, often stalled by internal divisions in the rebel movements, have failed to achieve any lasting settlement for the conflict in Darfur, which the United Nations has called the world’s gravest humanitarian crisis.
In a statement Sunday, 19 senior Sudanese Liberation Movement officials accused Abdel Wahid Nur of acting “unilaterally” by ending cooperation with the smaller Justice and Equality Movement rebels and said he would be replaced.
Nur “is determined to go it alone to consolidate his dictatorship … in his drive to carry out his narrow-minded personal agenda,” the officials said.
Nur was not immediately available for comment and it was unclear if the rebel group’s rank and file would follow him or his critics.
The movement had already been split into one faction led by Nur and another by Minni Minnawi. In November, Minnawi organized a congress at which he was elected president, removing Nur as chairman. Since then, both have claimed leadership, and both factions sent representatives to the latest round of peace talks.
Noureddine Mezni, the spokesman for African Union peace mediators in Nigeria, said the newest development did not bode well for talks to end the three-year-old conflict.
“We appeal to the parties to put the interest of Darfur above every other thing,” he said. “This is very important for us.”
After decades of low-level tribal clashes over land and water in the western Darfur region, rebels from ethnic African tribes upped the fight in early 2003, accusing the Arab-dominated central government of neglect.
The central government is accused of responding by unleashing Arab tribal militias known as Janjaweed to murder and rape civilians and lay waste to villages. The central government denies backing the Janjaweed, whose acts the United States says amounts to genocide.
(ST/AP)