Mediators at Darfur talks need patience – elder statesmen
October 3, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — Mediators at Darfur peace talks will need patience and negotiators need to be more representative of the people of Sudan’s remote west, a group of elder statesmen said on Wednesday after visiting the region.
But peace in Darfur will be meaningless unless democratic elections, part of a separate north-south peace deal, go ahead as planned by 2009, they said.
“We hope that the participants will be patient, because this complex issue cannot be solved in a few days or in a few weeks,” former U.S President Jimmy Carter told reporters.
He said many of the rebel groups, divided and numerous, did not represent the people of Darfur, who wanted peace, and said those members of civil society needed a voice at talks due to start on October 27 in Libya.
“Some of these rebel groups have no constituency except their own bandit members but they are the ones so far who are being qualified to participate,” he said at the end of a three-day trip to Khartoum, south Sudan and Darfur.
Carter had earlier said President Omar Hassan al-Bashir had pledged to triple compensation to those affected by the war to $300 million, but later said it was unclear what money was for reconstruction and what for compensation.
The group’s trip to Darfur was marred by a heated exchange between the 83-year-old former president and a Sudanese security man who tried to stop him visiting a tribal leader, pointing up some of the problems facing the world’s largest aid operation in the region.
International experts estimate 200,000 have died and 2.5 million have been driven from their homes in 4-1/2 years of fighting in Darfur. Mostly non-African rebels took up arms in early 2003 accusing central government of neglect.
But South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, head of the four-member team, said a north-south peace deal signed in 2005 known as the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was crucial.
“Peace in Darfur depends on the Comprehensive Peace Agreement,” he said, adding the only long-term solution to Sudan’s many conflicts was free elections.
DIVIDES OIL REVENUE
The CPA calls for democracy to be achieved by elections to be held by 2009 and gives 50 percent of revenues from oil south of the north-south divide to a new semi-autonomous southern government.
Carter said that if the CPA broke down, “nothing that is done in Darfur will alleviate the suffering of the people there, so we consider this to be of crucial importance.”
He said that while both northern and southern leaders promised not to return to war, differences over which oil wells fall south of a yet unmarked border were cause for concern.
“This is a cause that is so important that it could very well lead to renewed bloodshed but I have to say that both in the north and south we found no one that wants to go back to war,” he told reporters.
Earlier Carter publicly clashed with a Sudanese security chief who objected to his attempt to meet a Darfur tribal chief in a North Darfur town.
“No you can’t go. It’s not on the programme,” Kebkabiya security chief Omar Sheikh told Carter in a raised voice.
Carter angrily replied: “I don’t think you have the authority to do so. We are going to go anyway. I’ll tell President (Omar Hassan al-) Bashir.”
Tribal leader Al-Tayyib al-Bukoura, regional head of the local Fur people, eventually arrived but, refusing to speak in front of Sudanese security, drove off with Carter.
Displaced people from the town crowded the international visitors, including British tycoon Richard Branson, and slipped notes into their pockets detailing attacks and rapes.
One note said the government had ordered displaced Darfuris not to talk to visiting delegations and added “If representatives talked about the suffering of their people they would be arrested and tortured by government agencies.”
Graca Machel, rights campaigner and wife of former South African President Nelson Mandela, was visibly annoyed by security officers crowding round her as she listened to reports of rape from women’s groups. She ordered the men to leave.
The group was formed in July by Mandela and Machel to tackle protracted problems with the experience of a dozen global “elders.”
(Reuters)