Sudan says will ask Darfur rebels to curb movement

KHARTOUM, Aug 13 (Reuters) – Sudan’s government will demand rebels fighting in the western Darfur region curb their movements when they meet at peace talks later this month, the semi-official Sudanese Media Centre reported on Friday.

“We will call for the limiting of the rebel areas and the places where they have a presence,” the centre quoted Northern Darfur State Governor Osman Yousif Kibr as saying.

The African Union has said it will sponsor Darfur peace talks in Nigeria on Aug. 23 to end fighting which has created what the United Nations calls the world’s worst current humanitarian crisis.

The government has agreed to attend. Rebels from the Justice and Equality Movement and Sudan Liberation Army say they will also attend, but have expressed doubts about the date.

“If the rebel areas are not geographically limited then the expected agreement between the two sides will be liable to fail,” Kibr said.

“The freedom of movement of the rebels has led to a lot of clashes and has led to instability in the security of the region,” he added.

The rebels were not immediately available for comment.

The United Nations estimates violence in Darfur, where the rebels took up arms in early 2003, has killed 50,000, displaced 1 million and made 2 million short of food and medicine.

The rebels and human rights groups accuse the government of backing Arab militia to crush the rebellion and conduct a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Darfur’s non-Arabs. The U.S. Congress has called the campaign a genocide.

Khartoum has about two weeks to show the U.N. Security Council it is serious about disarming the militia, known in Darfur as Janjaweed, and prosecuting its leaders, or face sanctions.

The term Janjaweed comes from Arabic meaning devils on horseback.