Sudan government, western rebels trade blame on deadlock

KHARTOUM, Oct 30 (AFP) — Talks held in Chad to end a rebellion in Sudan’s western state of Darfur reached a deadlock on Tuesday that Khartoum has blamed on the rebels and they have blamed on the government and the Chadians.

The government and the rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) accused each other of putting forward unacceptable conditions for direct talks to resume in the eastern Chadian town of Abeche.

The government ruled out the deployment of the international monitors in Darfur, while the SLA accused Khartoum of seeking to impose a deal that provides for its dissolution even before the start of the negotiations.

“Sending international monitors to Darfur is ruled out because this will be an internationalisation of the problem,” the official Al-Anbaa daily quoted Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail as saying.

Khartoum had from the outset decided to solve the Darfur problem “in a bilateral framework” with the SLA, he said, and had accepted Chadian good offices “in view of the mutual security concerns and the tribal inter-relationship between the two countries.”

SLA secretary general Mani Arkoi Minawi said the government’s delegation has put forward a “diktat” at the talks in Abeche, some 300 kilometers (180 miles) from the Sudanese border.

“They said our delegation should sign a paper before resuming the direct talks,” Minawi told AFP in Cairo by telephone from Darfur. “This is a diktat,” he added.

He said the government paper “grants general amnesty for the SLA and provides for the SLA members to dissolve in the Sudanese army.” “That is tantamount to ending our movement without a fight,” he said.

Reporting from talks in Abeche, in neighbouring Chad, Khartoum newspapers said the two sides have not sat together at the negotiating table since Saturday and are conducting proximity talks with a Chadian mediator shuttling between the two delegations.

Minawi also accused “the Chadian meditor of not being honest,” by supporting the government paper.

He said the Chadians also imposed a black out on the SLA delegates, preventing them from contacting the media or “international parties.”

“We want international monitors to attend the talks,” he said.

Last Thursday, Minawi voiced fears that his group will be wiped out by government troops if Khartoum reaches an agreement ending its 20-year war with the southern rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).

“It will be a way for the government to regroup to suppress the other marginalised areas, including the west and our movement in particular,” he said.

The government delegation in Abeche is led by a senior interior ministry official, Abdullah Abdul Karim, officials in Khartoum said.

The SLA delegation is headed by one of its leaders, Abdullah Hasaballah Domee, Minawi said.

Minawi confirmed that the SLA delegation wanted the government to accept the deployment of international monitors to oversee the disarming of pro-government militias, the protection of civilians and the safe passage of relief supplies to areas under its control.

Thousands of civilians have been killed by the Janjaweed pro-government militia, SLA official Osman Bushra was quoted as saying by the Al-Anbaa.

“Our losses after the ceasefire were much more than during the fighting,” the newspaper reported him as saying.

On September 3, the government and the SLA signed a ceasefire agreement which they later accused each other of violating.

The Darfur rebellion, launched in February to protest against economic neglect of the semi-desert region by Khartoum, has left some 3,000 dead so far this year, according to UN estimates.

Another 400,000 have been displaced by the conflict.

The US Agency for International Development asked earlier this month that the Sudanese government provide security for its aid convoys to Darfur.