Sudan opponents, African mediators hold informal peace talks in Libya
NDJAMENA, Aug 12 (AFP) — The parties to the conflict in Darfur in western Sudan and African mediators have begun informal peace talks in Libya, a diplomatic source in the Chadian capital Ndjamena said on Thursday.
“A reconciliation meeting has been in progress since yesterday evening at Sirte in Libya between the two (Darfur) rebel movements, the Sudanese government, the African Union and the Chadian Foreign Minister” Nagoum Yamassoum, the source told AFP.
Yamassoum is chairing Chad’s efforts to mediate in the conflict in Darfur, in neighbouring Sudan, which the United Nations says has left between 30,000 and 50,000 people dead.
One of the main rebel groups, the Movement for Justice and Equality (MJE), which has refused to continue talks in Chad, confirmed that the meeting was taking place but declined to reveal its agenda.
The Chadian source said his country feared that Libya was trying to move in on the mediation process.
“The Sirte meeting is informal and we are afraid it (the mediation process) will be taken over by (Libyan President Moamer) Kadhafi at the expense of the African Union,” the diplomat said.
The AU has called for peace talks between the warring parties in Abuja, capital of Nigeria, current president of the AU, on August 23.
“If this informal meeting… makes it possible to prepare the ground for the August 23 meeting we could only applaud it,” the source said.
Libya suggested to the AU some days ago “an enlarged meeting” of all the parties aimed at ending the crisis in Darfur open to all the parties involved, Libyan Foreign Minister Abdelrahman Shalgham said Thursday.
Representatives of Chad, the United Nations, Nigeria and the AU gathered in Ndjamena Thursday to prepare for the Ajuba meeting, a spokesman for the mediation process said.
Since the fighting broke out in Darfur in February 2003 Chad, which has taken in tens of thousands of refugees, has attempted to broker a peace deal. A ceasefire agreement on April 8 was widely ignored and negotiations on “political questions” later that month in Ndajemena came to nothing.
When talks resumed in Addis Ababa in July under the auspices of the AU rebel groups refused to negotiate until Khartoum had satisfied certain conditions.
A spokesman for the MJE said it would take part in the Abuja talks but wanted the date put back.
“We shall take part, but there is a small problem,” Colonel Abdallah Abdel Kerim, military spokesman for the MJE, told AFP in Libreville by phone.
“On August 23 we have other commitments with our partners and militants.”
He said August 23 had been a unilateral choice by the AU. Until September 5 “our diary is very busy.”
The UN Security Council passed a resolution on July 30 giving the Sudanese regime 30 days to crack down on pro-government Arab Janjaweed militias, who have been accused of committing war crimes against Darfur’s ethnic black Africans.