Mini-summit scheduled on Saturday to spur peace in Darfur
April 5, 2006 (UNITED NATIONS) — A mini-summit has been scheduled on Saturday in Nigeria to discuss ways to speed up peace talks between Sudan’s government and rebels in Darfur, the U.N. spokesman said Wednesday.
Participants at the meeting in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, will include high-level representatives from the Republic of Congo, which currently chairs the 53-nation African Union, Nigeria and Sudan. AU Commission chairman Alpha Oumar Konare and U.N. deputy envoy Taye Zerihoun will also participate, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol said last month he was optimistic of a breakthrough in the peace talks “in the next weeks.” African Union Peace and Security Commissioner Said Djinnit said at the same time that a peace deal was within grasp by the end of April.
AU-mediated talks in Abuja slowed last year because of differences within a key Darfur rebel group.
Negotiations to resolve the Darfur conflict revolve around how to share political power and economic resources and deal with the region’s militias. Despite a cease-fire deal signed in Chad in April 2004 and the Abuja negotiations, fighting has continued.
Decades of low-level tribal clashes over land and water in the Darfur region erupted into large-scale violence in early 2003 when ethnic African tribes took up arms, 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.
Fighting in Darfur during the last three years has left about 180,000 dead — most from disease and hunger — and displaced another 2 million from their homes.
(ST/AP)