Darfur peace partner slams Arab League over reconstruction conference

By Wasil Ali

November 1, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — The only Darfur rebel group to have signed a peace deal with Khartoum sent an angry letter to the Secretary of the Arab League Amr Moussa criticizing him for bypassing his movement in the arrangements leading up to the Arab Conference on the humanitarian situation in Darfur held earlier this week.

Minni Minnawi, now a special advisor to President Omar al-Beshir as well as the leader of Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) told Moussa that he heads the Transitional Darfur Regional Authority and as such he should have been included in the preparations for the conference.

“We consider ourselves to be central to this process [preparing for the conference] in a manner that allows us to direct it to the benefits of our people in Darfur” Minnawi said in the letter.

Officials from Arab countries as well as some 300 representatives of economic, charity and relief institutions participated in the conference held in Khartoum earlier this week.

Moussa said that the participants at the conference pledged $250-million for the war-ravaged region.

However Minnawi said in his letter that “the only way this conference can achieve its goals of helping and assisting the people of Darfur is through the only mechanism empowered to implement the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) and the bodies established accordingly”.

The rebel leader noted that the Darfur Reconstruction and Development Fund formed under the terms of the DPA is the only body entitled to administer development projects in the region.

The senior presidential assistant complained in his letter that the Sudanese government is withholding the funds allocated to the Darfur Reconstruction and Development Fund. He warned Moussa against granting money to the party “that violated the DPA”.

The Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) signed in May 2006 between the Sudanese government and Minnawi’s faction has failed to stem the violence.

Most recently the Sudanese government attacked Minnawi’s bases in the town of Muhajirya using fighter jets killing at least 24 people.

Minnawi’s faction has grown increasingly frustrated with Khartoum’s negligence of the DPA and hinted that it is prepared to consider certain steps in its next meeting of the revolutionary council, the highest executive body in the movement, if the Sudanese government continues to stall on the implementation of the DPA.

“The SLA revolutionary council will be meeting in a couple of months and we will be taking decisions in light of our assessment to the government’s commitment to the peace agreement they signed with us last year” Al-Tigani Abdullah a senior adviser to Minnawi told Sudan Tribune by phone earlier this week.

Abdullah stressed that all options are open including the possibility of suspending participation in the government.

International experts estimate 200,000 people have died in the conflict, which Washington calls genocide, a term European governments are reluctant to use. The Sudan government says 9,000 people have been killed.

(ST)