Sudan lashes out at Darfur rebels over charges of summit ‘bias’

KHARTOUM, Oct 19 (AFP) — Sudan has lashed out at Darfur rebels for suggesting an African summit on the Darfur conflict was biased in Khartoum’s favor and denied it was convened to preempt a UN Security Council meeting on the troubled region.

Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail talks to reporters at the end of a meeting on Sudan’s Darfur region at an hotel in Tripoli, Libya, early Monday, Oct. 18, 2004. (AP).

“Anybody concerned about resolving the situation in Darfur would welcome the summit and its results,” Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail told reporters late Monday.

The five-nation summit in Libya on Sunday was aimed at bringing to an end a 20-month-old civil war in Darfur that has killed 70,000 people and displaced another 1.5 million, according the United Nations, which considers it the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Khartoum has been accused of abetting massacres by its proxy militias and not doing enough to protect civilians, with the United States and some rights groups even talking of genocide.

In a joint statement after Sunday’s meeting, the leaders of Chad, Egypt, Libya, Nigeria and Sudan itself stressed their “rejection of all foreign intervention in this purely African question”.

In response, the United States defended international pressure as a means to push Sudan into ending the crisis, saying African nations should take a leading role but stressed that concerted non-African influence was one key to success.

“We welcome any good-faith effort to try to help improve the situation in Darfur and certainly we have no difference with those who emphasize the African role,” spokesman Richard Boucher said.

The UN Security Council in September threatened sanctions on Sudan’s vital oil industry if Khartoum failed to rapidly rein in the Janjaweed militias accused of committing atrocities in Darfur. Western powers have since renewed the threat.

Darfur’s two main rebel groups, who were in Tripoli for talks on the sidelines of the one-day summit, expressed concern that the gathering was only designed to give Khartoum breathing space by keeping sanctions at bay.

“The communique was biased in favor of the government and adopted its point of view,” Ahmed Hussein Adam, a leader of the Justice and Equality Movement, one of the two main rebel groups in Darfur, charged on Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television.

“It was a summit of governments that listened only to the government’s viewpoint from President Omar al-Beshir,” Adam told the Sudanese Akhbar Al Youm daily.

“We wanted the summit to exert pressure on the regime to respond to the efforts by the international community and the African Union in tackling the political, humanitarian and security aspects of the (Darfur) crisis,” he added.

But Ismail, quoted by the official Sudan News Agency, said those who criticized the summit lacked “political insight”, describing it as giving new impetus to efforts to resolve the situation in Darfur.

Darfur’s main rebel groups, the JEM and the Sudan Liberation Movement, were sidelined from the summit, although Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi was mandated by the African leaders to continue consultations with the rebels.

The Security Council is considering holding a formal meeting next month in Nairobi, a rare gathering outside the UN headquarters aimed at pushing forward the peace process in Sudan.

Ismail denied the summit was intended to preempt the outcome of the UN meeting.

“If this meeting proceeds, from our point of view, it will be very useful as it would provide members with an opportunity to learn the truth about the situation in Darfur,” said Ismail.

Direct talks between the rebel groups and the Sudanese government are due to resume on October 21 in Nigeria, which currently chairs the African Union (AU). The first session ran between August 23 and September 18 in the Nigerian capital, but broke up without real progress.

The Arab League’s point man on Sudan, Samir Hosni, said Tuesday that he expected the two main rebel groups in Darfur and the government to achieve good progress during the Abuja peace talks.