Deal on Sudan’s Darfur possible by year’s end: Obasanjo
DAR ES SALAAM, Nov 20 (AFP) — A deal to end the devastating conflict in Sudan’s western region of Darfur could be signed by the end of the year, when Khartoum and southern rebels are due to formally end a separate 21-year conflict, the chairman of the African Union said.
AU chief and Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo told a news conference in Dar es Salaam that the AU’s intention was “to move on and conclude on Darfur at the same time they conclude in the South. It is not impossible.”
On Friday, Khartoum and the southern rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army promised the UN Security Council in Nairobi that they would conclude two years of peace talks in the Kenyan town of Naivasha with a comprehensive peace accord to end a war that began in 1983 and has claimed some 1.5 million lives.
Separate negotiations between Khartoum and two rebel groups from Darfur, who rose up against the government in February 2003, are to resume on December 10.
The UN has described the situation in Darfur as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. Tens of thousands of people have died and more than 1.6 million been displaced by the fighting.
Speaking at the same news conference, after a summit meeting on Africa’s volatile Great Lakes region, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said he had just met Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir.
Annan said Beshir told him the Sudanese government wanted “to finish the Darfur negociations perhaps before the Naivasha one.”
While the latest Darfur talks, held earlier this month in Nigeria, strengthened a repeatedly violated April ceasefire and produced more pledges about safeguarding humanitarian aid, they have made little progress on the political front.
Obasanjo and the AU mediators at the Nigeria talks applied huge pressure on the parties to agree to a broad statement of political principles, which would serve as a foundation for talks on a final settlement.
But this bid failed, due mainly to resistance from the rebels, and the next round of talks will start by returning to this month’s unfinished business.
Khartoum’s delegates to the talks accused the rebels of stalling for time in the hope that a frustrated international community, in particular the United States, will step up pressure on the government to cede to their demands.
Meanwhile, the rebels accuse the government of cynically signing an agreement to disarm its proxy militia the Janjaweed — accused of ethnic cleansing and scorched earth tactics in Darfur — and to end “hostile military flights” over Darfur without having any intention of enforcing it.