AU issues deadline to Khartoum and Darfur rebels
By Camillus Eboh
ABUJA, Dec 17 (Reuters) – The African Union issued a 24-hour deadline to the Sudanese government and Darfur rebels on Friday to end fighting after a massive military build-up in the region over the last two weeks.
The United States, Britain and the United Nations weighed in with warnings to both sides, as the AU said huge quantities of arms had poured into Sudan’s vast desert region of Darfur and that the government was poised for a major military offensive.
The AU, which is brokering peace talks to end a conflict that has displaced 1.6 million people and killed tens of thousands, said it would report any further ceasefire violations to the U.N. Security Council for action.
“The commission gives the parties a deadline of up till tomorrow 6 p.m. (1700 GMT) to take concrete measures to comply with the decisions,” the AU said in a statement after a meeting in the Nigerian capital Abuja.
“The commission requests the AU from now to report any violations … (to) the UN Security Council which will take appropriate action,” it said.
The Sudanese government delegation said the decision was not binding on Khartoum.
“TIMED BOMB”
The AU commander in Darfur, Nigerian Festus Okonkwo, said his efforts to mediate between government troops and rebels had yielded minimal results and the region was now a “timed bomb that could explode at any moment”.
“The quantity of arms and ammunition brought into Darfur to meet (the needs of) the present build-up of troops in the region is (so) astronomical that the issue is no longer whether there will be fighting or not, but when fighting will start,” said Okonkwo, head of an AU team of 834 ceasefire monitors in Darfur.
A Sudanese brigade, which normally numbers 600-700 troops, advanced towards Labado in southern Darfur on Thursday, backed by about 200 militiamen, Okonkwo said.
“From a military point of view, this indicates an offensive, which if launched would be prejudicial to the peace process.”
Okonwo’s assessment was delivered to AU-sponsored peace talks in Abuja that were suspended on Monday by the rebels, who accused the government of launching an offensive.
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said that if Okonwo’s assessment was true “it is a major violation of the ceasefire”.
“I hope the government will refrain from any action of that kind,” Annan told a news conference in Brussels.
“We have been very, very concerned about the violence recently, the violence from both sides,” said U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.
“We have re-emphasised the need for the parties to engage in peace talks.”
In London, a British Foreign Office spokeswoman said British officials had told the Sudanese Foreign Ministry that “Sudan is in breach of three U.N. Security Council resolutions and that the fighting must stop”.
After years of tribal skirmishes over scarce resources in arid Darfur, the rebels took up arms last year.
They accuse Khartoum of neglect and of using so-called Janjaweed Arab militias to loot and burn non-Arab villages. Khartoum denies arming the Janjaweed and calls them outlaws.
The United Nations has said Darfur, an area the size of France, is suffering from one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises with 2.3 million people in need of aid.