Sudan agrees to talks with 3rd Darfur rebel group

By Opheera McDoom

KHARTOUM, Dec 5 (Reuters) – Sudan said on Sunday it had agreed to hold political talks with a third rebel group from its troubled Darfur region.

Members of the Sudan Liberation Army (AFP).

Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said the talks with the rebel National Movement for Reform and Development (NMRD) would be separate from the African Union-sponsored Darfur peace process.

Talks with the two main Darfur rebel groups, the Sudanese Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) are due to restart in the Nigerian capital Abuja around Dec. 10.

“(The government) affirmed that the talks with them (NMRD) will not be as a new member of Abuja. But there will be some talks with them,” he told reporters in Khartoum.

“In the near future, the government will be trying to open channels of communication with them with the help of Chad.”

He said there was no date set for the talks to begin: “There is no specific date set. We don’t have direct relations with them so we need a third party, which is Chad, to communicate with them,” he added.

Ismail said the African Union had asked at the previous round of Abuja talks that the NMRD be included, but JEM threatened to pull out if they joined.

The NMRD split from JEM earlier this year. Ismail said estimates of their forces ranged between 1,000 and 3,000 and they were mainly present in the Chadian border town of Tine and in the Jabel Moun area in West Darfur state.

Ismail added talks would be on security considerations, stopping NMRD attacks on tribes in the areas they operate in, the protection of refugees and their evacuation from some of their positions.

After years of skirmishes between Arab nomads and mostly non-Arab farmers over scarce resources in arid Darfur, rebels took up arms early last year accusing Khartoum of neglect and of using Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, to loot and burn non-Arab villages.

Khartoum admits arming some militias to fight the rebels but denies any links to the Janjaweed, calling them outlaws.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said in a statement issued on Sunday that it had handed over to Sudanese military authorities 11 soldiers who had been held by the SLA since September/October.

The United Nations has threatened Sudan with possible sanctions if it fails to stop the violence, which the United States calls genocide.

The World Health Organisation estimates more than 70,000 people have died since March in Darfur from malnutrition and disease. There are no reliable figures for how many people have died as a result of the violence itself.