Sudan says will attend Darfur peace talks in Addis

By Opheera McDoom

ADDIS ABABA, July 5 (Reuters) – Sudan has agreed to attend African Union-mediated talks in Ethiopia later this month aimed at reaching a negotiated end to the crisis in Darfur, Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said on Monday.

“Our position is to cooperate fully with the African Union … I can assure you that we will attend this meeting,” he said of the AU talks scheduled for July 15.

The AU has made Darfur a top item on its agenda during meetings in Addis Ababa this week. One official said the war in Sudan’s west could be a litmus test for the two-year-old organisation’s ability to resolve conflicts in Africa.

But despite pressure from the AU, the United Nations and the United States, the path to peace in Darfur remains difficult.

Two rebels groups that took up arms against the government last year have said they would not negotiate unless Sudan first disarmed maruading militias and respected a shaky ceasefire agreed in April.

The rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) say the government has armed Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, to loot and burn African villages in a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Khartoum denies the charge.

After U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s visit last week to Sudan and neighbouring Chad, where about 200,000 Darfur refugees are encamped, Sudan signed a joint communique vowing to disarm the militias, allow unrestricted aid access in the remote west and speed up talks.

Some observers have cast doubt on Sudan’s ability to carry out its commitments to disarm militias on its own.

“As you dig deeper into the political situation here, you start to wonder whether Sudan is actually capable of controlling the situation in Darfur,” said one observer at the summit, who declined to be named.

After long conflict between Arab nomads and African villagers, a rebellion broke out last year in the western Sudanese region that borders Chad.

The United Nations says the fighting has displaced more than one million people, triggering what has been described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. As many as 30,000 people have been killed.

The situation has gained increased urgency with the rainy season already affecting parts of Darfur. Aid workers have said the rain, in addition to continued security concerns, will severely hamper desperately needed humanitarian operations.

“If people return to their villages, in the current circumstances thousands could die,” one aid worker told Reuters by telephone from Darfur.

Mohamed Sahnoun, the U.N. secretary-general’s adviser on Africa, told Reuters Sudan needed help to disarm the Darfur militias and the African Union should provide it.

“There’s a need for the AU to deploy forces so that they can help in creating access for humanitarian aid,” he said, adding it would be a monitoring force for now as that was what Sudan had agreed to.

Ismail said Sudan was also in discussions with the United Nations about a plan to send in U.N. teams to talk with local leaders about development and demobilization and to help disarm militias.

The United States has raised the spectre of a Security Council resolution against Sudan if it does not take action in Darfur, but so far a draft targets only the Janjaweed.

Ismail said U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s visit last week would help avert any plan for U.N. action against Sudan. Sudan is already under sanctions from the United States, which lists it as a state that sponsors terror.

“We believe that Annan and Powell’s visits and discussions in the AU give a real picture of what is going on in Sudan and this will contribute to dropping any action against Sudan,” he said.