Nigeria wants AU troops to disarm Darfur rebels
By Dino Mahtani
ABUJA, Aug 22 (Reuters) – Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo on Sunday proposed to give a greater role to African Union (AU) troops in restoring peace to Sudan’s Darfur region on the eve of talks between the Sudanese government and rebels.
Obasanjo, who is also AU chairman, said the international force should disarm Darfur rebels as part of a deal that would see the government disarm the Janjaweed, a pro-government militia accused of driving a million people from their homes.
“I believe that the AU protection force with the observers and government of Sudan must work together to garrison the rebels and put them in a position where the arms are collected,” Obasanjo said on live television show on Sunday. “Concurrently the government of Sudan must lay heavily on the Janjaweed.”
Rwanda has already sent 155 troops to protect AU representatives monitoring a ceasefire between the two sides in Darfur, and Nigeria is due to send another 150 this week.
But Nigeria is already thinking of sending up to 1,500 troops and other African nations have offered to join them.
Previous Darfur peace talks broke down in July after rebels demanded Khartoum disarm the Janjaweed as a precondition.
“The government argument is ‘If we disarm them, we have to make sure the rebels are disarmed’,” Obasanjo said. “The government may not be capable of peaceful disarmament of the rebels. This is where the efforts of the AU will be necessary.”
The Sudanese government has already rejected the presence of foreign troops for anything other than protecting monitors.
The Darfur revolt broke out in early 2003 after years of conflict between Arab nomads and African farmers over scarce resources in the arid, landlocked region.
Obasanjo said Khartoum armed the Arab Janjaweed militia to fight the rebels, but refugees accuse them of looting and burning villages in a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
The U.N. says the fighting has sparked the world’s worst humanitarian crisis with about 200,000 refugees in neighbouring Chad and more than one million displaced inside Sudan. Up to 50,000 have been killed.
REFUGEES RETURN
The talks in the Nigerian capital come two days after the Sudanese government, under threat of United Nations sanctions, signed an agreement with the world body to help refugees return to their homes and give Darfuris more say in local government.
The government has set up safe areas for refugees and agreed to double the number of police in the area the size of France.
The U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, Manuel Aranda da Silva, said he was encouraged by Sudan’s actions to improve the humanitarian situation in Darfur, but said the main obstacle to reaching all those in need was capacity and funding.
Obasanjo said the two sides needed to come to a political solution for aid and disarmament efforts to succeed.
“Getting relief materials to the needy, disarming people — those will only serve our purpose when the issue of political solution to the problem of Darfur is addressed — the meeting here is essentially to deal with that issue,” Obasanjo said.
Representatives of the rebel groups Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) arrived in Abuja on Sunday, ahead of top negotiators and the Sudanese government’s delegation.
AU spokesman Assane Ba told Reuters the conference could go on for as long as a week.
Government representatives from Chad, Eritrea, and Libya as well as the vice presidents of Ghana and Uganda and President Denis Sassou Nguesso of the Republic of Congo were expected to attend the talks, said Ba.
Airport officials in Abuja confirmed Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa was also due to arrive on Monday.
(Additional reporting by Tom Ashby in Lagos)