Sudanese government says ready to continue with talks
ABUJA, Sept 16 (AFP) — The head of the Sudanese delegation at the AU-mediated peace talks on the crisis-ridden Darfur region, Majzoub al-Khalifa, said late Wednesday that Khartoum was ready to continue negotiations with the rebels.
“The government is ready to continue the negotiations at any time we are asked to come back,” he told a group of journalists, including an AFP reporter.
Sudan’s ambassador to Nigeria, Abdel Rahim Khalil, also told AFP in a telephone interview from Lagos that Khartoum was “ready to continue with the talks.”.
“We are still waiting for positive response from the (rebel) movements and the AU mediators on the direction of the talks,” he stated.
One of the two rebel groups, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) earlier Wednesday declared to AFP that the talks had collapsed.
The other rebel movement, the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) is expected to make its position on the talks public Thursday, its delegates told AFP.
“I cannot say the talks have collapsed. The government is ready to continue the negotiations at any time we are asked to come back,” Khalifa said.
“I think it’s more possible that the SLM too will not sign the protocol on humanitarian issue. This means an end to this session of dialogue,” said Khalifa, Sudan’s chief negotiator at the talks, in a vague expression on Khartoum’s real position on the talks.
“JEM declared this morning that they are not going to sign the humanitarian protocol and declared the failure and collapse of the talks,” he stated.
Meanwhile, following a declaration earlier Wednesday that negotiations had collapsed, delegates to the meeting did not hold an afternoon session.
Khalifa deliberately chose to avoid the use of the word “collapse” while briefing the press on the talks, expressing the hope that the rebels would accept to sign the protocol on humanitarian issue as proposed Tuesday by AU chairman, Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo.
JEM, one of two rebel movements engaged in peace talks with Sudan’s government said Wednesday the negotiations over the Darfur region had collapsed and could be suspended for weeks.
Mohammed Ahmed Tugod, the chief negotiator for JEM, told AFP that “the negotiations have collapsed already because there are differences, strong differences between us and the Sudanese government.”
The AU-mediated talks in the Nigerian capital Abuja are a bid to end a conflict which erupted in west Sudan in February 2003 and has become what the United States last week called a “genocide”, claiming up to 50,000 lives and displacing almost a million and a half people.
“The AU is now suggesting to suspend the talks for four weeks, and for us it is as if the talks have collapsed,” Tugod said.
The United Nations, which has put the death toll between 30,000 and 50,000, has described the food and refugee problem created by the conflict as the world’s worst current humanitarian crisis.