INTERVIEW: Sudan wants no-strings-attached talks with Darfur rebels
KHARTOUM, Aug 4 (AFP) — Sudan is ready to renew peace talks with Darfur’s two main rebel movements as long as they refrain from setting preconditions for Khartoum, the country’s junior minister for foreign affairs told AFP in an interview.
“We are ready to renew negotiations, but we will not accept any preconditions. If we accept preconditions, we won’t have anything to negotiate,” Tigani Saleh Fadel said.
“It is in the interest of the Sudanese government to resolve the Darfur problem as quickly as possible — today instead of tomorrow,” he added.
Khartoum has come under crushing international pressure to resolve the conflict pitting the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) rebels against its soldiers and pro-government Arab militias whose scorched-earth campaign has killed tens of thousands and displaced well over a million people.
But efforts by the African Union (AU) to bring the warring parties to the bargaining table have failed so far — in part due to rebel preconditions for Khartoum.
Plans for mid-July talks in Addis Ababa collapsed when the rebels demanded that the Sudanese government first demilitarize the Janjaweed militia and bring alleged war criminals to book.
The rebels, which have previously met in the Eritrean capital Asmara, have also refused to go to Addis Ababa, site of the AU headquarters, citing Ethiopia’s good relations with the government of Sudan.
The AU said earlier that a new round of Darfur talks could take place by the end of this month, though no date or venue has been set.
Fadel said rebels had suggested talks be held in one of five countries: Burkina Faso, Kenya, Libya, Nigeria or South Africa. A choice will be made within days, he added.
The minister urged the rebels to send high-level negotiators “and not lower-rung delegates without a precise mandate, like they did at the Addis Ababa negotiations”.
He also said the Darfur rebels would have to gather their soldiers in certain areas of the desert region in accordance with the ceasefire accord signed in April — and then repeatedly broken — by both sides.
“The regrouping of the rebels, as determined, in specific geographic zones, will facilitate the disarmament of other groups, which is the responsibility of the government,” he said.
“As long as armed rebels continue to roam through Darfur freely, it will be difficult to disarm the groups.”
Last week, the UN Security Council passed a resolution giving Khartoum 30 days to disarm the Janjaweed militia or face international action including the implicit threat of punitive sanctions.
In reaction to the UN move, he said: “The threat of sanctions and military intervention in Darfur does not contribute to resolving the problem, but only complicates them.”
“If it was just up to the government, we would like the Darfur problems to be solved not in a month, but today rather than tomorrow. But we must take into account the complexity of the situation in Darfur,” he said.
Meanwhile, the AU said earlier Wednesday it could bolster what was supposed to be a 300-man unit to protect AU ceasefire monitors in the stricken region to a 2,000-strong peacekeeping force.
But Sudan’s army has vowed to fight “the enemies of the Sudan on land, sea and air,” and on Wednesday tens of thousands of Sudanese also protested in Khartoum against foreign intervention, marching on UN offices and chanting anti-US and anti-British slogans.