Agreement imminent on ceasefire in W. Sudan
By Nima Elbagir
AL-FASHIR, Sudan, April 8 (Reuters) – A ceasefire agreement is imminent between the Sudanese government and rebels who have been fighting the government in western Sudan for more than a year, officials from the two sides said.
Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail Osman told reporters in al-Fashir, the capital of Northern Darfur state, that the three-part agreement could be signed in the Chadian capital N’Djamena within minutes.
It would cover humanitarian access to the troubled region, where the conflict has displaced hundreds of thousands of people, a cessation of hostilities and the outline of a political settlement to the conflict, he added.
Abu Bakr Hamid al-Nur, spokesman for the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), told Reuters: “We have not signed yet, but we have moved closer to an agreement on a ceasefire. We have agreed on the broad lines and basic points.”
The agreement could come during the day, possibly within an hour, he said by telephone from N’Djamena. JEM and another rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Movement, say they took up arms because the government has neglected the vast region and has armed Arab militias which raid African villagers in a conflict for land and water.
A Sudanese official and Sudanese state radio, monitored by the BBC, earlier reported a deal on aid for Darfur, where the United Nations has warned of a humanitarian disaster.
The radio report said the two sides were still discussing a ceasefire, with agreement expected “within the next few hours”. The SLM was not immediately available to comment.
On Wednesday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned the international community that a Rwanda-style genocide may be in the making in the arid region of Darfur and suggested an international military force could be needed there.
The Khartoum government rejected the idea, and U.S. officials said Washington was focusing on diplomatic efforts to stop the violence. The United Nations estimates more than one million people have been affected by the conflict. Some 110,000 refugees have fled into neighbouring Chad.
Two senior U.N. officials have described the killing and looting as a “scorched earth” campaign and “ethnic cleansing”. Both said Khartoum had done nothing to stop the bloodshed.
Husam Bashir, director of the Sudanese Human Rights Group in Khartoum, said he hoped a ceasefire would be effective on the ground as marauding militias aligned to both sides had apparently become autonomous in their killing raids.
U.S. President George W. Bush on Wednesday condemned the atrocities by Arab militias in Darfur and suggested Washington would not normalise relations with Sudan until it stopped the conflict.
Washington still lists Sudan as a “state sponsor of terrorism”, but had said it could reconsider the listing if a separate peace deal being negotiated to end more than two decades of civil war in southern Sudan was signed.
Separately, a southern rebel official said on Wednesday a deal could be reached within three days to end the 20-year-old conflict there in which two million people have died, mostly through starvation and disease.