Darfur rebels ask US to put pressure on Sudanese govt
May 2, 2006 (ABUJA) — Darfur rebels held Tuesday a meeting with the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick. They asked him to convince Sudanese government to make more concessions.
“We asked him (Zoellick) to put pressure on the government side so that we can have a balanced paper and then we can sign it,” said Ahmed Hussein, a spokesman for the Justice and Equality Movement, one of the Darfur rebel factions.
“We told him that our demands are very limited. We are asking for the rights of the people of Darfur within a united Sudan,” he told reporters after meeting Zoellick.
Neither Zoellick nor Sudan government officials, who earlier took the line there was no more for them to do, were immediately available for comment.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick waded into the long-stymied talks, pressuring the various factions to strike a deal. British Cabinet member Hilary Benn joined him.
“I believe there has to be an end to this process,” Zoellick said.
Rebels, however, stuck to their demands for concessions on security and power-sharing. The Sudanese government said it approved a draft of the peace deal to end fighting that has killed more than 200,000 people and left millions more homeless. The draft was first circulated last week at the African Union-hosted talks.
The African Union has selected five African heads of state to help ensure that any agreement on Darfur is accepted by all parties, said the Republic of Congo’s U.N. Ambassador Basile Ikouebe, whose country is the current chair of the 53-nation bloc.
Ikouebe said the leader of his nation, along with those from South Africa, Nigeria, Senegal and Egypt were scheduled to be in Abuja on Thursday to meet the participants in the negotiations.
“If there is agreement, these five heads of state will then on behalf of the African Union be sponsoring that agreement, and if there is no agreement, then they will become directly involved in the matter, and they will support the efforts of the mediators,” the ambassador told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York.
Ted Chaiban, who heads Sudan operations for the U.N. Children’s Fund, said among the hardest hit areas was rebel-held Gereida, near the South Darfur capital of Nyala, which UNICEF says has seen major Arab militia attacks that have forced 200,000 people from their homes in the last three months alone.
Chaiban said the various factions were likely expecting a treaty in Abuja and were jockeying to hold the most territory before a cease-fire was declared.
“It is important that the agreement be signed so that this kind of jockeying … would cease,” Chaiban said in a telephone interview.
AU mediator Salim Ahmed Salim said his team tried to strike a compromise on rebel demands for autonomy, creating a transitional authority for the region that would include rebel representatives and proposing that the people of Darfur vote by 2010 on whether to create a single geographical entity out of the three current Darfur states.
“We are moving forward trying to do our utmost … to close the gap,” Salim said.
A unified Darfur presumably would have more political weight, and the rebels had demanded one be created by presidential decree.
The rebels also had demanded that a third vice president, from Darfur, be added to the national government. The compromise draft called for the president to include a Darfur official, initially nominated by the rebels, among his top advisers.
In accepting the draft, the government agreed to disarm militia it is accused of unleashing on Darfur civilians, commit millions of dollars to rebuilding a region devastated by poverty and war, and compensate victims of the fighting, Salim said.
The Sudanese government has said it may accept U.N. peacekeepers to help resolve the crisis once an agreement is signed.
Zoellick was dispatched to the peace talks after thousands of people rallied over the weekend in the United States calling for an end to violence and deprivation in Darfur.
Decades of low-level tribal clashes over land and water in Darfur erupted into large-scale violence in early 2003. The central government is accused of responding by unleashing Arab tribal militias known as Janjaweed upon civilians. Sudan denies backing the Janjaweed.
Darfur has been a staging ground for Chadian rebels, who have risen up against the government there, and Sudan accuses Chad of supporting Darfur rebels. The violence threatens to escalate: Osama bin Laden last week urged his followers to go to Sudan to fight a proposed U.N. presence.
(ST)