Darfur rebel group to send delegation to UN Sudan session in Nairobi

NAIROBI, Nov 17 (AFP) — One of the two main rebel groups from Sudan’s troubled region of Darfur has said it will send a delegation to a two-day session of the UN Security Council due to open in the Kenyan capital on Thursday.

A rebel from MJE.

“We are participating. There will be a delegation,” Ahmed Adam, a spokesman for the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), told AFP on Wednesday by telephone from London.

Adam said the UN had extended a verbal invitation to the movement through Jan Pronk, Secretary General Kofi Annan’s envoy to Sudan.

“I expect them to arrive on Thursday,” said Adam.

The Council meeting — the first in 14 years to be held outside New York — is set to focus principally on Sudan’s main, and much older civil war between the Khartoum government and the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army.

Also Wednesday, both the government and the SPLA said a final deal to end their 21-year-old conflict would be reached within days of peace talks resuming on November 26.

While Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Taha and SPLA leader John Garang are scheduled to address the Security Council in Nairobi, JEM and the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLA), the second main rebel group in Darfur, are not.

The SLA could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Adam argued that his movement had a right to be heard because Darfur, suffering what the UN has termed the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, would be discussed in Nairobi.

“We want to express our point of view. We are not coming to just listen to Garang and Taha,” he insisted.

Tens of thousands of people have died and an estimated 1.5 million displaced in the 21-month conflict raging on in Darfur.

The conflict has exacerbated by a reign of terror unleashed by pro-government Arab Janjaweed militias widely accused of committing gross human rights violations which the US has said amount to genocide.