Talks to end fighting in Sudan’s Darfur province run into the sand

NDJAMENA, April 6 (AFP) — Chadian mediators on Tuesday pursued efforts to persuade the Sudanese government and a rebel delegation to negotiate an end to the conflict devastating the west of Sudan.

But the rebels, who have demanded face-to-face talks with government representatives in the presence of international observers, accused the team from Khartoum of preventing progress.

Members of both delegations went separately into the Chadian foreign ministry for talks during the afternoon.

“There is nothing new. We are still at the same point. The government still refuses to meet in the presence of the international community,” the leader of the team representing the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (MJE), Abubker Hamid Nour, had said earlier.

“We will never hold discussions without the presence of the international community. The international community bearing witness to the talks is very important to us,” he said.

The conflict in Sudan’s Darfur province began in February 2003 and worsened just as Khartoum and the country’s main rebel group, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, started finalising a deal to end Sudan’s wider civil war, which had began in 1983.

The United Nations says the Darfur conflict, believed to have claimed more than 10,000 lives in little more than a year, is now the “world’s greatest humanitarian and human rights catastrophe”.

An estimated 670,000 people have been forced from their homes, many seeking refuge in the east of neighbouring Chad, itself a deeply impoverished country.

Hamid Nour said the rebels want international observers to attend their direct talks with the Sudanese government because Khartoum had failed to uphold a deal reached at earlier negotiations with the rebels at which no international observers were present.

“We are ready for a ceasefire but the government doesn’t want to talk,” said the rebel chief.

Chadian President Idriss Deby, who is to play no part in any substantive negotiations, on Monday held separate meetings with each of the Sudanese teams at the foreign ministry.

On Tuesday, the head of state had talks with the chief mediator, Chadian Foreign Minister Nagoum Yamassoum.

Representatives of the Khartoum government have accepted a draft plan put forward on Saturday by the Chadian mediators as the basis for negotiating an end to the Darfur conflict.

The Chadian plan proposes a ceasefire, guarantees for the safety of the civilian population and measures to resolve the humanitarian crisis, a Chadian official said on condition of anonymity.

Hamid Nour said the rebels would only give their view of the proposed document “in the presence of mediators, the government delegation and international observers”.

But he said the rebels had “withdrawn certain points, added some and agreed to others”, without going into details.

A United Nations mission began a probe on Tuesday into allegations of widespread atrocities by government-backed militias in Darfur.

“The technical fact-finding mission on the human rights situation in Darfur is starting today,” said Annick Stevenson, a spokeswoman for the United Nations’ European headquarters in Geneva.

“The mission will start in Chad and will interview refugees from Darfur, and will visit Sudan later,” she said in a statement.

But Stevenson later told AFP that the mission had not been given the green light yet by Khartoum and the UN was continuing negotiations to try to gain access to western Sudan.