Sudanese parties resume direct negotiations over Darfur conflict
April 10, 2006 (ABUJA) — Parties to Sudan’s Darfur conflict have resumed direct negotiations following a weekend meeting with African Union leaders, officials said Monday.
The Sudanese government and Darfur rebels are talking directly to each other for the first time since January, African Union spokesman Nureiddine Mezni said. The two groups spent the past few months meeting separately with negotiators in the capital of the west African country.
Denis Sassou-Nguesso, Republic of Congo’s president and current head of the 53-nation African Union, had teamed up with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo to urge Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Taha and rebel leaders toward a resolution of more than three years of conflict.
“The parties agreed to negotiate directly,” said Mezni. “We are encouraging them to do so; it’s really positive.”
More than 180,000 people have died in the civil war in western Sudan, with millions more forced from their homes. Seven rounds of talks in Abuja since August 2004 have yet to yield a breakthrough to end the fighting.
The decision to negotiate directly could result in the signing of a new cease-fire proposed by mediators “in the coming days” and lead to the conclusion of a peace agreement, an African Union statement cited Sassou-Nguesso as saying.
The statement said Sassou-Nguesso asked mediators to quicken the preparation of a draft agreement settling differences on the key issues of how to share power and resources and maintain security in postwar Darfur.
Decades of low-level tribal clashes over land and water in Darfur erupted into large-scale violence in early 2003 when some ethnic groups took up arms, accusing the east African nation’s 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. Sudan denies backing the Janjaweed.
(ST/AP)