Talks for Sudan’s Darfur deadlocked over disarmament: AU officials

ABUJA, Sept 6 (AFP) — Peace talks between Darfur’s rebel groups and the Sudanese government were stalled Monday over the issue of disarmament, as an African Union-brokered conference entered its third week, AU officials said.

“There appears to be deadlock because the two sides are sticking to their hardline positions,” General Festus Okonkwo, commander of the AU ceasefire monitoring team in Darfur, told AFP at the Abuja talks.

The Khartoum government is demanding that the rebels be disarmed at the same time as the pro-regime Janjaweed militia, while rebel leaders insist they will not demobilise until their Arab enemies are demobilised, Okonkwo said.

AU officials said that they were seeking an opportunity to bring both sides into a meeting with Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo, the host of the talks and chairman of the AU, to try to seek a compromise.

“We are looking for them to meet the president so that we can have his comments on the draft protocol and possibly talk to the two sides so that they can soften their stances,” the general said.

Officials have tentatively scheduled a further meeting between the two sides to negotiate an agreement on security for 3:00 pm (1400 GMT) Monday.

“We have submitted our responses to the draft protocol on security to the AU. We did that this morning and we are waiting for them to invite us to the meeting,” said rebel spokesman Abdelhafiz Mustafa Musa.

The African Union convened the talks in the Nigerian capital Abuja on August 25 in a bid to find a negotiated settlement to an 18-month-old civil conflict in the western Sudanese region of Darfur.

Rebel groups rose up against Khartoum in February last year, alleging that Darfur’s black African tribes have been economically and politically marginalised by Khartoum’s Arab elite and demanding greater autonomy for the western region and a bigger share of the national income.

A government crackdown, spearheaded by the Janjaweed militia, has triggered what the United Nations has dubbed the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis”.

More than 1.4 million civilians have been driven from their homes in the fighting, and more than 30,000 killed.