ROUNDUP: Darfur rebels, Khartoum agree to talk in Nigeria
ADDIS ABABA, Aug 08, 2004 (dpa) — The Sudanese government and two rebel groups battling it in the troubled region of Darfur have agreed to hold talks in the Nigerian capital Abuja later this month, the African Union said Sunday.
In a statement from its headquarters in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, the AU said Khartoum, the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudan Liberation Movement will attend the negotiations, scheduled to take place on August 23.
The agreement to talk came after lobbying by the AU chairman, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, and the chairman of the AU commission, Alpha Oumar Konare, said the statement.
Previous AU-brokered talks – the first direct negotiations between the government and the two rebel groups – collapsed last month when the rebels walked out after setting a series of preconditions for talks.
Some 50,000 people have been killed and 1.2 million displaced as a result of the conflict in Darfur in recent months, according to humanitarian organizations.
Pro-government Arab militias known as Janjaweed stand accused of grave human rights violations against the local civilian population of black Africans.
A U.N. Security Council resolution is calling on Khartoum to disarm and prosecute the militia by the end of August.
The African Union is preparing to deploy a force of 300 troops to protect its military observers in Darfur.
Several African heads of state have endorsed a proposal to increase the number of AU troops on the ground to 2,000 and give them a peacekeeping mandate.
However, specific plans for deployment have yet to be agreed and Sudanese ministers have said they would not welcome a foreign force.
In other developments on Darfur over the weekend:
The Arab League convened a crisis meeting in Cairo on Sunday on the Darfur crisis and gave signs of some disagreement over the issue.
Ahead of the meeting, the Sudanese foreign minister Mustafa Osman Ismail told reporters his government was asking Arab nations to support its efforts on security in Darfur and political support “to keep away the phantom of foreign interference in Sudan”.
Omani Foreign Minister Youssef bin Alwi bin Abdullah called for “serious Arab support” to Sudan, recalling what he described as “the tragedy of previous sanctions imposed on Iraq and Libya.”
But Oussama al-Baz, advisor to Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak, asked the Sudanese government “not to fall in the trap of racial conflict.”
Reports in pro-government media on the weekend said Khartoum has agreed to the deployment of eight observers from the United Nations Human Rights Commission to Darfur to investigate allegations of abuses by the government backed Arab Janjaweed militias.
Meanwhile, a U.N. human rights report released Saturday linked the Sudanese government to extrajudicial killings and summary executions in Darfur.
The report, based on a visit to the region in June by Pakistani human rights lawyer Asma Jahangir, concluded that killings of civilians by Arab militia in Darfur were done in co-ordination with forces of the Khartoum government.
More than 70 members of an umbrella group critical of the government’s handling of the Darfur crisis were arrested Saturday by unidentified security personnel in Khartoum just minutes before they were to begin a press conference.
Officials of the Popular National Council (PNC) said their members were arrested on unspecified charges shortly before they were to hold a news conference to announce a strategy for resolving the humanitarian and security situation in Darfur.