Sudan and Darfur rebels meet face to face for talks

By Silvia Aloisi

ABUJA, Oct 29 (Reuters) – Sudanese government delegates and Darfur rebels agreed on Friday to meet face to face for the first time at talks in Nigeria to discuss a draft security framework aimed at breaking a deadlock in negotiations.

Magzoub El Khaliffa Ahmed, Sudan’s Minister of Agriculture and Forestry and head of Sudan’s delegation, talks with the media after peace talks with rebels in Abuja, Nigeria October 27, 2004.

Both sides have expressed doubts over the framework, which African Union mediators hope will stop violence in Darfur that has driven more than 1.5 million people from their homes.

“There is going to be a plenary session tonight,” a mediator told Reuters in the Nigerian capital Abuja, where the talks are being held.

The draft security proposal requires the government to make good on pledges to disarm their Arab and Janjaweed allies and identify any other militias they have been supporting.

The document will call on both sides to cooperate with the AU ceasefire commission and say where their forces are located.

Rebels have voiced scepticism over the document, saying it does not mention a demand for a no-fly zone over Darfur or tell the government to pull back its forces to barracks.

“We don’t think that this will guarantee security on the ground,” said Abdullahi Osman, adviser to the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), on Friday.

Sudanese government representatives at the talks say the document is weak because there is no demand for rebels to garrison their forces.

The United Nations says Darfur is one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, which has killed around 70,000 people through disease and malnutrition since March. There are no reliable figures for how many people have died in the fighting.

The top U.N. envoy in Sudan, Jan Pronk, has said a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding that the violence stop in Darfur and a humanitarian protocol drawn up in April mean the two sides need not discuss aid access or security, which stalled a previous round of talks in Abuja.

Rebels have refused to sign a humanitarian deal, though they have agreed to it in principle, until a deal on security had been reached.

A hundred Rwandan troops prepare to fly to Darfur on Saturday to join Nigerian soldiers that have just arrived in the vast arid region.

The AU force’s main job is to monitor a ceasefire agreed in April that each side accuses the other of breaking, but their mandate also includes protecting civilians threatened with immediate harm.

The Darfur rebellion began in February 2003 after years of low-level fighting between mainly African farmers and Arab nomads over scarce resources. The rebels accuse Khartoum of using the mounted Janjaweed to loot and burn non-Arab villages.

Khartoum denies the charges, arguing over the exact definition of the militia it says is one of many armed groups separate from paramilitary groups recognised by the government.