Sudan’s Garang offers to help bring peace to Darfur

NAIROBI, April 26 (AFP) — The main rebel leader in Sudan has agreed to help in efforts to end a devastating conflict between Khartoum-backed militias and two smaller rebel movements in Sudan’s western Darfur region, rebels said Monday.

John Garang, the leader of southern-based Sudan’s People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), made the offer in Eritrea over the weekend when he met with Abdulwahid Mohammed Ahmed, the leader of the Darfur-based Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), SPLA spokesman Yasser Arman said.

“Garang agreed to assist in efforts to bring peace in Darfur,” Arman told AFP by telephone from the Eritrean capital Asmara.

“We made it very clear that we are ready to give our advice and opinion on how to end the conflict. We are a very important force in Sudan politics and we cannot be ignored,” Arman said.

According to Arman, Acting US Assistant Secretary of State Charles Snyder and US special envoy to Sudan’s peace process John Danforth have asked Garang to help resolve the crisis in Darfur, where some 10,000 people are thought to have died and up to a million have been displaced since armed conflict broke out there in February 2003.

Garang is personally engaged in deadlocked negotiations in Kenya aimed at ending Sudan’s wider civil war, which broke out in 1983.

“We cannot have peace in Sudan even if we sign a peace agreement in Kenya and fighting goes on in Darfur,” added the SPLA spokesman.

Separate talks in Chad between the SLM and the allied Justice and Equality Movement adjourned Sunday with no breakthrough but with both sides agreeing to meet again.