AU presses outhold rebels to sign Darfur deal

May 15, 2006 (ADDIS ABABA) — The African Union ratcheted up the pressure on two rebel factions on Monday to sign a peace agreement for Sudan’s Darfur region, threatening international sanctions if they did not come around.

Only one of the three Darfur rebel factions signed a May 5 accord with Khartoum to end fighting that has killed tens of thousands of people, and officials fear the two holdouts could instigate violence to scuttle the deal.

Alpha Oumar Konare, chairman of the African Union (AU) commission, urged a faction of the rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) led by Abdelwahid Mohamed al-Nur and the smaller Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) to sign the deal unconditionally.

“Should they embark on any action or measure likely to undermine the Darfur peace agreement, especially the ceasefire provisions, the Council should take appropriate measures … including requesting the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions against them,” he said in a statement.

The warning came as the AU’s Peace and Security Council met in Addis Ababa to discuss how to push forward the peace process in Darfur, which U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan says is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Konare called for more AU troops to be sent to Darfur and urged Khartoum to produce a plan to disarm pro-government militias accused of a campaign of murder and rape that has driven more than 2 million people into camps in Darfur and neighboring Chad..

In another sign of a concerted drive by the AU to pull the rebels into the deal, its chief Darfur mediator warned Nur he would become irrelevant unless he accepted an agreement already signed by his rival Minni Arcua Minnawi, leader of the biggest SLA faction.

“In every situation where people have not been on board, eventually they will have to come on board or become irrelevant,” Salim Ahmed Salim told Reuters.

CONDITIONS

Nur has come under increasing pressure to sign the deal, but has set conditions that he says must be met first. Although he is weak militarily, he represents Darfur’s largest Fur tribe.

Nur demands greater compensation from Khartoum for Darfur war victims, more political posts for the SLA and greater involvement by the movement in the disarmament of pro-government militias.

“When I am assured that the supplementary document has addressed our demands and been attached to the agreement, I shall then attach my signature to the Darfur Peace Agreement,” Nur said in a letter to the AU on Monday.

But his close adviser, Ibrahim Madibo, said Khartoum had already rejected the demands. “We received a response from the Sudanese government and it was not positive enough for us to go ahead and sign,” Madibo said in the Nigerian capital Abuja.

Diplomats say efforts to bring Nur around were likely to continue beyond Monday’s original deadline to seal the deal at the Addis meeting. Nur remained in Abuja after the chief Darfur negotiators moved to Addis on Sunday.

The peace agreement has provoked violent protests in Sudan by refugees who say it is not enough to protect them, and criticism from the Sudanese opposition that the parties were pressured into signing an ill-considered deal.

Annan said in an editorial in the Financial Times that the AU mission should be turned over to the United Nations as soon as possible, but until then rich nations must provide immediate funding for the AU forces.

A senior U.N. official in Addis said the meeting there would focus on providing the AU with a new mandate to monitor the peace deal, and improving logistics before a U.N. takeover.

“We also plan to increase the international force operating in Darfur from the present 7,000 to between 12-14,000,” U.N. principal deputy special representative for Sudan Taye-Brook Zerihoun told Reuters.

Sudan had rejected a U.N. deployment in Darfur before a peace deal and European Union officials said last week Khartoum now appeared to be reconsidering allowing U.N. troops at all.

The SLA and the JEM took up arms in early 2003 accusing the Arab-dominated central government of neglecting Darfur, an arid ethnically mixed region the size of France.

Khartoum backed Janjaweed militias, drawn from Arab tribes to crush the insurgency.

(Reuters)