Sudanese president to hold Libya talks with Darfur rebels
Feb 19, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir is to travel to the Libyan capital for talks with Darfur rebel factions that refused to join a 2006 peace deal for the restive western region, official media announced.
“President Omar al-Beshir will travel to Tripoli on Tuesday in response to an invitation by Libya’s Colonel Moamer Kadhafi for negotiations with the armed movements of Darfur which have declined to signed the Abuja peace agreement,” a source in the presidential palace told AFP.
“Beshir has earlier declared willingness to negotiate with the armed movements,” the source said, declining to elaborate on the guest list for the two days of talks.
The official SUNA news agency said that the Sudan envoys of the African Union and the United Nations — Salim Ahmed Salim and Jan Eliasson — would also join the talks, along with Eritrean President Issaias Afeworki, who in the past stood accused by Khartoum of supporting the rebels.
The announcement from Khartoum follows a joint visit to Sudan by the two envoys last week after which Eliasson said he detected an opportunity for renewed negotiations.
“Now we think it is time to take the political process seriously,” the UN emissary said Saturday.
“This is an opportunity. We need to choose the road of peace and negotiations, not the road of confrontation,” he said, adding that he had received “positive signals” from holdout rebel factions.
Ethnic minority rebels in Darfur rose up against the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum in February 2003, drawing a scorched earth response from the military and allied militias.
According to UN estimates, 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced.
The government signed a peace accord with one rebel faction in the Nigerian capital in May last year, but other factions declined to sign up to the deal and the conflict has raged on, and even intensified according to aid groups.
Beshir has in the past rejected talk of revising the Abuja accord to make it more acceptable to the other rebel factions, a policy that the UN envoy criticised during last week’s visit.
“The Abuja accord should not be treated like a sacred text, like the Bible or the Koran,” Eliasson said.
(AFP)