New JEM suspends delegates’ participation in Sudan’s dialogue

December 10, 2015(KHARTOUM)-The New Justice and Equality Movement (New JEM), a breakaway faction from the rebel JEM mainstream that fights the Sudanese government in Darfur, says its leader and delegates aren’t going to partake in the ongoing National Dialogue Conference, in session here since October 10.

The group’s leader Mansour Arbab Younis and delegates were supposed to arrive here on Wednesday, after understandings with envoys from the National Dialogue Conference.

The rebel faction explained its decision saying the government has reneged on an agreement reached earlier with dialogue emissaries .

According to the said agreement, the government has consented to extend the ceasefire in the war zones, the cancellation of death sentences ruled against elements belonging to Darfur rebel movements, the publication of a list of prisoners of war captured during the “Nakhara Battle’’ of April 2015, in addition to the hosting of the movement’s delegates to the conference.

New JEM general-secretary Huthayfa Mohy-Eddin on Wednesday told Sudan Tribune that their advance delegation that arrived in Khartoum on Tuesday to prepare for the arrival of the movement’s leader and delegates had felt that the government had backed from those commitments which , he said, were accepted by the government upon mediation from the dialogue panel known as 7+7 Mechanism.

“We have no space for courtesies. The movement leader isn’t coming to the conference until those commitments are met . Accordingly, we will not participate in the dialogue.’’ Said Mohy-Eddin .

He said they had confined their contacts to the 7+7 mechanism “because we do not trust the government.’’

“ The 7+7 mechanism had reaffirmed government commitment to all our conditions , a matter that did not happen,’’ he said.

“If those conditions are not met the movement’s advance delegation will return to where it came from,’’ he added.

(ST)