SLM’s Minawi welcomes UN troops in Darfur
June 5, 2006 (AL-FASHER) — The Darfur rebel leader who signed a peace deal with the Sudanese government last month says UN peacekeeping troops should deploy in the violent west, disagreeing with Khartoum.
Minni Arcua Minawi, the tall, wiry leader of the main faction of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), said in an interview on Sunday night he still did not fully trust the government he fought for three years, but his advance team would arrive in the capital next week to begin implementing the May 5 peace deal.
“I have the advance team which should be in Khartoum next week and after that we will prepare to go there,” Minawi told Reuters in Al-Fasher, the main town in the Darfur region.
He said he did not know why the government opposes a transition from the cash-strapped African Union (AU) force monitoring a largely ignored truce in Darfur to a UN mission, which should be better equipped to protect civilians from murder, rape and pillage.
“When we signed the peace we requested the AU forces to come here … I think the UN forces have the right to come here … to protect the civilians,” he said.
After talks with U.N. troubleshooter Lakhdar Brahimi, the government reluctantly agreed to let a joint UN-AU planning mission come to assess the needs of a possible UN force. That mission is expected to arrive at the end of the week.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than 2 million have fled their homes in more than three years of civil war in Darfur — violence the United States calls genocide.
Sudan denies genocide but the International Criminal Court (ICC) is investigating alleged war crimes in the region.
BETTER LOGISTICS
Tens of thousands who have sought refuge in the miserable camps in Darfur have been demonstrating to demand that UN forces protect them, attacking AU bases and even beating to death an interpreter last month.
Minawi said he saw no difference between AU and UN troops, except that the UN force would have better logistics and more resources.
He also said he was not worried about the thousands of Darfuris in Khartoum and across the region who have been protesting against the signing of the deal because the other SLA leader, Abdelwahid Mohamed al-Nur, as well as the other rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), did not sign.
“With … time everyone will recognise that the peace is for them, the peace is for the Darfuri people,” he said.
Minawi has just returned from Yei in south Sudan, where the first vice president of Sudan, southerner Salva Kiir, and diplomats had arranged a meeting to reconcile Minawi and Nur. But Nur failed to turn up.
“We waited there for three days and there are many efforts from the international partners … and Salva Kiir … but up to now I think everybody is frustrated,” he said.
Nur says he wants more compensation for war victims, more political representation, and rebel involvement in a mechanism to disarm the Arab militia known as Janjaweed, which the agreement does not provide for.
The international community says the Khartoum government armed the Janjaweed to fight the rebels. Despite two years of promises to disarm the militia, it has not done so. Asked why Minawi thought it was serious now, he said it had no choice:
“The modalities in the agreement … are timelined and also there is a plan supposed to be adopted by the AU … All these things are progress towards disarmament of the Janjaweed.”
(Reuters)