Darfur JEM ‘regrets’ US informal position on Doha accord
March 4, 2010 (DOHA) – The Justice and equality Movement (JEM) regretted today statements attributed to the US ambassador to the United Nations downplaying a framework agreement signed in Doha last month.
“JEM regrets Rice’s stance toward the movement and its efforts to achieve peace in Darfur, and what was expected from her was to throw her support to this move aiming at ending the conflict,” said JEM spokesperson Ahmed Hussein Adam.
“These statements will not discourage the movement from its strategic choice to achieve peace and protect the interest of Darfuri people,” he said, adding that they deal with this regime as de facto government just like the US administration does.
Ahmed further stressed that JEM has no Islamist Agenda and does not aim to establish Islamist state in the country.
“We have a clear program and the fact that some of its members were members of the Islamic movement has nothing to do with JEM,” he said.
The Sudanese government and many observers accuse Ibrahim of being an associate of the Islamist opposition leader Hassan Al-Turabi who was the ideological mastermind of the 1989 coup that brought president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir to power.
Khalil Ibrahim held posts in the government in the 90’s and served in the Sudan’s popular defense paramilitary.
In 1999, Turabi who was the parliament speaker at the time fell out with Bashir and was jailed on accusations of conspiracy. He was released in October 2003.
The JEM chief led a bold attack on the Sudanese capital in May 2008 that took the world by surprise but was quickly repelled by Sudanese army. Turabi was briefly arrested afterwards along with a handful of his party members after authorities said that that they have obtained documents and testimony from JEM rebel captives that could implicate him in aiding the raid.
Rice’s remarks resemble those of US special envoy to Sudan Scott Gration made in late January during a private meeting with members of the Darfur Diaspora at the United States Institute for Peace (USIP).
One of the figures who attended the meeting told Sudan Tribune that Gration lashed out at JEM and its leader Khalil Ibrahim saying that his ambitions lay beyond Darfur and suggesting that he is eyeing taking over the government in Khartoum.
The JEM official said that such defamations against the rebel group “are disseminated by JEM enemies and fed by the Sudanese ruling National Congress Party to discredit the Movement which represents the inspirations of Darfurians”.
The rebel official said there a many common value that we share with the USA, and called on Washington to conduct constructive dialogue with JEM for the interests of two people in Sudan and US.
He expressed hope that JEM will not pay the price of a “power struggle inside the American administration”.
JEM chief Khalil Ibrahim has been placed on US sanctions list since the days of former president George W Bush accusing him of being responsible “for a number of violent incidents”.
(ST)