Mini-summit convenes on Darfur crisis, rebel groups sceptical
TRIPOLI, Oct 17 (AFP) — Leaders from Sudan and four regional states held talks on the Darfur crisis, but rebel groups left on the sidelines feared Khartoum was seeking only to ease international pressure.
An official Libyan source said Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir and the leaders of Chad, Egypt and Nigeria, which chairs the African Union (AU), met after breaking the day-long Muslim fast of Ramadan with an “iftar” hosted by Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi.
The talks between Beshir, Kadhafi, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and Presidents Idriss Deby of Chad and Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria were expected to last several hours.
Earlier, their foreign ministers held talks ahead of the mini-summit designed as a first step toward direct talks between the two main Darfur rebel groups and the government in Khartoum.
The Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), were not invited to take part in the mini-summit but have been holding consultations with Libyan officials for the past week.
On Sunday, they voiced their scepticism over the gathering.
“Egypt and Chad want Libya to pressure Darfur rebels to avoid an internationalisation of the conflict and force them to sign agreements that will not meet their aspirations,” a JEM official told AFP.
The UN Security Council passed a resolution in September threatening sanctions against Sudan’s vital oil industry, saying the government had failed to rein in the Janjaweed militias which rebels say Khartoum has used as proxies to crush their 20-month-old uprising.
The resolution “has internationalised the issue, but it is now up to us, and especially the AU, to try to contain this problem by giving the Sudanese government a chance to deal with it in a sensible manner,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit told reporters.
The UN and western powers have accused the Janjaweed of massacres in the western Darfur region and charged that Khartoum has done little to protect civilians, allowing what is now described as the world’s worst current humanitarian crisis.
Confusion surrounded the fate of direct talks between the government and the rebel groups after Nigeria announced Friday that a fresh round of negotiations scheduled for next Thursday had been switched from Abuja to Tripoli.
But SLM official Ibrahim Dafaallah told AFP his movement “had not been informed of a change of venue for the talks and our delegates are already on their way to Abuja.”
“We insist any negotiations be under the aegis of the African Union,” JEM spokesman Ibrahim Idriss Azrag added, suspecting Libya of being too accommodating with Khartoum.
A first round of AU-sponsored talks broke up after more than three weeks of bickering between Khartoum’s delegates and the two rebel movements.
The AU has spearheaded international efforts to resolve the crisis and is in the process of deploying a 4,500-strong peacekeeping force from around five African countries to Sudan to oversee the peace process.
According to diplomatic sources in Tripoli quoted by the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram, Kadhafi singled out three issues to be addressed during the mini-summit.
The Libyan leader reportedly wanted the talks to find ways of guaranteeing food supplies to Darfur’s displaced, restore security, and find a global solution that would spare Sudan from threatened international sanctions.
In the latest such warning, Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot — whose country holds the rotating presidency of the European Union — said last week that Sudan “should continue to feel the pressure from as many sides as possible.”
The UN’s World Health Organisation recently charged that 70,000 civilians had died in camps from disease and malnutrition since March, a figure which Khartoum disputed.