Darfur rebels demand deadline extension for peace talks
April 28, 2006 (ABUJA) — A Sudanese Darfur rebel faction demanded Friday the African Union extend its deadline for the concluding peace talks, as Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo pressured the warring sides to sign a proposed deal.
The AU has been brokering talks for nearly two years aimed at ending fighting in Darfur that has left about 180,000 dead and forced millions from their homes. AU mediators distributed a draft peace agreement this week ahead of a Sunday deadline for the talks to end.
The Sudan Liberation Movement, one of two rebel groups battling in Darfur since 2003, said it needed more time to consider the document and that it had asked for a deadline extension from Obasanjo, who is hosting the talks.
“We requested of the president that by April 30 it is not possible for us to conclude on our position. I will not be able to say how long because it is a technical issue,” said Waheed Al-Nur, one of the group’s leaders. Obasanjo wasn’t available for comment.
The other rebel group, Justice and Equality Movement, said it had only received a copy of the deal written in English — a language it said 70 percent of its delegates can’t read — and that it was waiting for the document in Arabic.
Still, that insurgent group said it was willing to work toward a deal before Sunday, echoing public optimism on the part of the Sudanese government delegation.
Obasanjo personally met with the heads of each delegation and rebels said he leaned on the groups to sign the deal.
“We met President Obasanjo. He was urging the parties to put initials on the documents,” said Ahmed Tugod, a leader of the smaller and newer JEM faction.
As of Wednesday, when an initial draft of the agreement was first circulated, the proposed agreement addressed complaints from Darfur rebel groups that they had been neglected by the national government. It called for the president to include a Darfur expert, initially nominated by the rebels, among his top advisers.
The draft, noting that Darfur was “historically deprived” and suffered severely from the war, also called for the establishment of a rehabilitation fund to which international donors would be asked to contribute, suspension of school fees at all levels for students from Darfur for five years, and the adoption of a national anti-poverty plan.
In the draft, mediators also proposed that the people of Darfur vote by 2010 on whether to create a single geographical entity out of the three current Darfur states, which would presumably have more political weight.
It was unclear what was contained in the document Friday, after two days of work.
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.
The draft agreement calls for the disarmament of the Janjaweed. It also calls for some rebels to be integrated into the national army and security forces and others to be disarmed.
The U.N. says the Darfur fighting has caused one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters and chaos has now spread into neighboring Chad, where hundreds of thousands of Darfur refugees are sheltering.
A small detachment of AU troops have so far failed to stem the violence in the region the size of France.
(ST/AP)