Khartoum upbeat over Ndjamena encounter
KHARTOUM, March 30 (AFP) — The Sudanese government is optimistic that its talks with rebels from the western Darfur region scheduled for Tuesday in the Chadian capital Ndjamena will succeed, a member of the government delegation said Tuesday.
“Chadian President Idriss Deby is qualified to contribute to resolving the conflict in Darfur through negotiations,” Kamal al-Obaid, external relations secretary of the ruling National Congress, told AFP.
“President Deby’s success in managing to bring the warring parties together is a promising sign that the talks he is sponsoring will be a success,” Obaid said.
He added that the government delegation of which he is a member would leave for Ndjamena during Tuesday in time for the meeting set for Tuesday evening.
The delegation leader, Investment Minister Al-Sherif Ahmed Omar Badr, told reporters that the meeting would pave the way for a comprehensive conference on peace, development and coexistence presently being prepared for but no date or venue has yet been set for it.
Allami Ahmat, an adviser to Deby, said Monday when he announced the talks, “We think we will have enough time to reach a conclusion, unless there are last-minute problems, by Friday.”
The Darfur conflict erupted in February 2003 between the government and rebels, who complain their region is marginalised. More than 10,000 people have been killed in the fighting, and an estimated 670,000 have been forced from their homes, many seeking refuge in neighbouring Chad.
The UN humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, Mukesh Kapila, earlier this month described the conflict as “the world’s greatest humanitarian and human rights catastrophe”.
Kapila said most of the atrocities were being carried out by militia groups fighting the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM).
Experts of the UN Commission on Human Rights said in a statement sent to AFP in Nairobi on Monday also expressed concern over “systematic” human rights abuses in the Darfur region and demanded punishment for those responsible.
“It is reported that the population in Darfur — mostly from the Fur ethnic communities of the Masalit, Dajo, Tunjur and Zaghawas — has been the victim of systematic human rights violations, committed by the government allied militia such as the Janjaweed, Muraheleen and the popular defence forces,” the statement added.
They said militias had killed civilians, attacked refugees, raped women and girls, abducted children, torched and looted villages and destroyed livestock.
The conflict has intensified just as the Khartoum government and the country’s main rebel group, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, are finalising a deal to end Sudan’s wider civil war, which began in 1983.