Darfur rebel SLA-Minawi, Sudan govt agree peace deal
May 5, 2006 (ABUJA) — The biggest of three Darfur rebel factions and the Sudanese government accepted a peace settlement on Friday but two other rebel factions rejected the deal, casting doubt on whether it would be workable.
Both the government and a Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) faction said they accepted the peace terms with reservations but did so to end three years of fighting and suffering in Sudan’s arid west.
“I accept the document with some reservations concerning the power sharing,” SLA faction leader Minni Arcua Minawi told Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick and a host of senior diplomats meeting at Obasanjo’s Abuja compound.
A spokesman for Minnawi’s group said the main reservation was what they saw as insufficient representation in parliament.
The agreement Minawi’s SLA faction accepted was an amended version of an African Union (AU) drafted document produced after two years of talks. Western diplomats reworked parts that draft to win the support of rebels.
These amendments included stronger guarantees for the rebels in the security arrangement. In particular, provisions for rebel fighters to join the Sudanese armed forces were strengthened, as was a requirement Sudan disarm its proxy Janjaweed militias.
The government delegation, which had earlier accepted the AU draft, told a meeting of African heads of state and Western diplomats they would also accept the new terms.
“They have great misgivings about the amendments and they say practical problems will arise in the implementation … but they don’t want to give anybody grounds to continue the war,” said Sam Ibok, head of the AU mediation team.
Ibok said the government’s main misgiving was the integration of rebels into security forces. Khartoum representatives said the numbers of rebels to be absorbed into government security forces were too high.
“BIG DAY FOR DARFUR”
Mediators clapped and embraced at the end of the session with the government delegation and everyone in the room had a wide smile on their faces despite the all-night marathon talks.
AU chief mediator Salim Ahmed Salim said he would have been happier if all rebel factions had signed but this was nevertheless “a big day for the people of Darfur”.
“In realistic terms the agreement between the government and the SLA Minni is a major development. The two of them working together can make a major contribution to a return to peace and normalcy in Darfur,” Salim told Reuters.
Ibok said: “We are hoping those who are outside the agreements now will not do anything to impede the implementation because if they do there will be a robust response from the AU and the U.N. Security Council.”
A rival faction of the SLA and the smaller Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) earlier rejected the deal citing a wide range of objections.
AU negotiators said they would bring rival SLA faction leader Abdel Wahed Mohammed al-Nur back to the talks to ask him if he would reconsider and accept the deal.
Minnawi has more support among SLA fighters than Nur, observers say, and JEM is marginal in terms of forces on the ground. But it is unclear how useful an agreement signed by only one of the three factions would be.
“JEM frankly doesn’t matter but Abdel Wahed does. There are provisions in the agreement for armed groups that are not signatory to be made to observe the agreement,” said a Western diplomat, who has been involved in the crafting the blueprint.
He said these provisions could offer an avenue to include Nur’s faction during the implementation process and he also added there would likely be U.N. sanctions against those who blocked the agreement.
Three deadlines for a peace deal had passed since Sunday despite intensive efforts to end a war that has killed tens of thousands of people and driven more than 2 million from home.
The SLA and the JEM took up arms in early 2003 in ethnically mixed Darfur, a region the size of France, over what they saw as neglect by the Arab-dominated central government.
Khartoum used militias, drawn from Arab tribes, to crush the rebellion. A campaign of arson, looting and rape has caused a humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur and the United States labels the violence there “genocide”.
(Reuters)