Sudanese president calls on Darfur rebels to join Doha talks

September 19, 2009 (KHARTOUM) — In a message to his people on the occasion of the Eid Al-Fitr holidays, the Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir urged the Darfur rebels to drop arms and join the peace talks in the Arab Gulf state of Qatar.

“Our country has suffered from war bitter years and the people were harmed a great deal. The South saw the horrors of war and found no way forward but peace,” Al-Bashir said in statements carried by Sudan official News Agency (SUNA).

“As the war in Darfur begins to subside and almost over and whoever is left from Darfuris carrying arms against the government to drop their guns and restrain themselves from aggression and work with us to make the Doha round the last one in the path of pain that our people has bore” he said.

Qatari mediation efforts in the Darfur have so far yielded a goodwill agreement between Khartoum and the Darfur Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) last February.

However, talks faltered after Sudan ordered more than a dozen aid groups out of the country in retaliation to the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant for Bashir in March.

Sudan also refused to release any of the JEM prisoners sentenced to death following their attack on the capital in May 2008.

JEM asserts that Khartoum has already violated the terms of the agreement by expelling the aid groups and refusing to swap POW’s.

Libya and Egypt are also moving in parallel initiatives on political settlements efforts for Darfur particularly in trying to unite rebel groups but so far, these efforts appeared to have failed.

Moreover, Egyptians expressed unhappiness with the role Qatar is playing in the mediation stressing that the Gulf state is not geopolitically close to the region and thus with no experience to resolve it.

The UN estimates that up to 300,000 people have died and 2.7 million have fled their homes amid violence that started six years ago in Darfur.

(ST)