Sudan and two Rebel Groups Agree to Peace Talks

ADDIS ABABA, Aug 8, 2004 (The New York Times) — The Sudanese government and two rebel groups fighting in western Sudan have agreed to peace talks in Abuja, Nigeria, on Aug. 23, the African Union said Sunday.

A spokesman for the African Union, Adam Thiam, said the group’s chairman, President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, would mediate discussions between the Sudanese government and the Justice and Equality Movement and Sudan Liberation Army in the Nigerian capital. Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail of Sudan said the government would take part in the talks without conditions. The leader of the Liberation Army, Abdel Wahed Muhammad Ahmed al-Nur, said from the Darfur region of Sudan that his rebel movement would send a high-level delegation to the talks and that he welcomed Nigeria as a neutral site and Mr. Obasanjo and the African Union as neutral mediators.

But the leader of the Justice and Equality Movement, Bahar Idriss Abu Garda, said his group had not been told of the date. He said that the group accepted Abuja as a meeting place but that its leaders were already scheduled to attend a conference in Germany on Aug. 23.

The rebels have been fighting government forces and Arab militias in Darfur for the past 19 months. The militias have uprooted more than one million non-Arab villagers in the region and have created a human calamity that the United Nations has called the worst in the world.

In Cairo on Sunday, the Arab League rallied around the Sudanese government, saying a plan drawn up by the government and the United Nations to deal with the crisis would head off threatened United Nations sanctions against the country. Sudan has about three weeks left to show it is serious about disarming the Arab militias in Darfur before the penalties take effect. The leader of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, praised the agreement with the United Nations, saying, ”This step enables Sudan and the Arab League to challenge any calls for the imposition of sanctions on Khartoum.”