Sudan says ready for new round of peace talks

PARIS, July 21 (Reuters) – Sudan is ready to resume peace talks on the Darfur crisis if African mediators can arrange new negotiations with rebels, Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said on Wednesday.

Darfur rebels walked out of talks at the weekend after the Sudanese government rejected six preconditions for talks, including the disarming of Janjaweed Arab militias and the prosecution of those suspected of ethnic cleansing and genocide.

“I have confirmed to (French Foreign Minister Michel) Barnier that we are absolutely ready to participate in the next round of negotiations as soon as a date has been set by the African Union (AU),” Ismail said after meeting Barnier in Paris.

Ismail also said his government was committed to ensuring international aid reached people affected by the crisis, which the United Nations says has displaced more than one million and killed as many as 30,000.

The Sudanese government faces growing international pressure to help avert greater disaster. The rebels and human rights groups accuse Khartoum of arming the Janjaweed to loot villages in a campaign of ethnic cleansing, and report mass killings.

The government denies the charges.

German liberal Gerhart Baum, who served as U.N. human rights investigator for Sudan until last year, said the violence there constituted genocide and a weapons embargo was essential.

“The entire leadership in Khartoum is pursuing a policy of ethnic cleansing. In my eyes it’s genocide happening there,” Baum told the German newspaper Tagesspiegel.

After long conflict between Arab nomads and black African farmers, rebel groups launched a revolt in February 2003 in the west of the oil-producing country. Janjaweed militias went on the rampage, driving black Africans into barren camps.

The African Union is due to meet rebels in Geneva on Thursday in an effort to revive talks. The Swiss said officials from neighbouring Chad, where tens of thousands of Sudanese have taken refuge, would also attend.

But the Sudanese government will not be represented. It says it is ready to discuss rebel demands but not as preconditions. The AU says it will meet Sudanese officials separately this week.

(Additional reporting by Berlin and Khartoum bureaux)