Darfur peace talks in jeopardy after Sudan govt ignores truce ultimatum

ABUJA, Dec 19 (AFP) — African Union mediators were to meet with envoys from the Sudanese government and Darfur’s main rebel groups after Sudan threw the region’s peace process into turmoil by launching a fresh offensive.

A Sudan Liberation Army rebel patrolling the desert west of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur. (Reuters).

On Saturday the Khartoum government brushed aside international demands that it halt a two-week-old push into rebel territory and clashed with insurgents in the southern Darfur community of Labado, AU officials told delegates in Abuja.

Earlier, ahead of a 1700 GMT deadline imposed by the African Union for the troops to withdraw, African diplomats had warned that the Abuja conference would collapse if both sides refused to respect a ceasefire.

The AU mediators will talk to the warring parties again on Sunday, but each side has blamed the other for the chaos.

“The government troops are still occupying the positions of the (rebel) movements. They are not interested in peace. They are not ready to respect their agreements,” said Maghoub Hussein of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM).

The peace conference has been deadlocked since last Tuesday when the SLM and its ally the Justice and Equality Movement said they would not sit down with the Khartoum government while December’s offensive continues.

But Sudan’s junior foreign minister Najeib Abdelwahab, who is also in Abuja for the conference, blamed the insurgents for the breakdown in the truce.

“Labado is within the area assigned to the government of Sudan according to the Ndjamena agreement,” he told reporters. In April, the two sides signed a ceasefire deal in the Chadian capital, the first stage in the AU peace process.

“What the government is doing in this area is within its sovereign rights and consistent with the Ndjamena agreement for ceasefire. So it’s actually the rebels who have come to take Labado,” he said.

Nevertheless — while not sparing the rebels from criticism over attacks on aid workers and police stations — the African Union has been very clear in its condemnation of Sudan’s latest actions.

Khartoum’s decision also deals a severe blow to the African Union’s bid to resolve the crisis without broader international intervention and increased the likelihood that the United Nations will be asked to take action.

AU spokesman Assane Ba said the 53-nation body’s chairman President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and the head of the AU Commission Alpha Oumar Konare would be informed of the clashes and take a decision on the future of the talks.

As Saturday’s deadline came and went with no sign of the government backing down, the commander of the AU observer force in Darfur told international envoys in Abuja that government helicopters were bombarding Labado.

At the same time, from his headquarters in Addis Abeba, Konare issued a statement calling on Khartoum “to immediately stop its present military offensive and withdraw its forces to their former positions”.

“The chairperson reiterates the undertaking by the AU commission to bring any serious violation to the attention of the AU Peace and Security Council and the UN Security Council,” he warned.

Darfur has been the embroiled in conflict since February last year, when two rebel movements launched a revolt against Khartoum, claiming that the Arab-led government had marginalised and persecuted the region’s black African tribes.

In the subsequent crackdown, pro-government militias have attacked black communities, murdering and raping tens of thousands of civilians and driving more than 1.6 million from their homes, according to the United Nations.