Darfur rebels threaten to abandon monitoring group

CAIRO, Jan 4 (Reuters) – One of the main Darfur rebel groups threatened on Tuesday to pull out of a joint commission monitoring a shaky ceasefire in Sudan’s western region.

SLA rebels gather for a meeting with au monitors at Gellab, a village in the desert east of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state on November 8, 2004..

The committee includes rebel representatives from the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), as well as government representatives from Sudan and Chad.

The SLA criticised the African Union’s poor monitoring of a ceasefire signed in Chad on April 8 and said that it intended to abandon the commission unless government forces withdrew from areas Khartoum had captured in the past two months, an SLA statement sent to Reuters said.

The SLA also accused government forces of launching an attack in an area under SLA control. Sources in the aid community in Khartoum said they had heard of attacks in the same area around the town of Mellit in northern Darfur.

Both sides of the conflict in Darfur, where more than a milion people have been displaced, have accused each other in the past of violating the ceasefire.

The SLA gave the government until the end of the current week to completely withdraw and said the AU needed to take a clearer position on the continued fighting.

“The government is committed to pre-April 8 ceasefire lines,” Sudan’s state minister for foreign relations, Najeeb al-Kheir Abdul Wahab, told Reuters in Khartoum.

“If the rebels withdraw from the joint commission, this would be a flagrant violation of the commitment all sides made at the Abuja talks,” Abdul Wahab said.

JEM officials were not immediately available for comment about the group’s position towards the committee but have previously refused to return to the AU-sponsored peace talks, saying the African Union had failed to protect civilians.

JEM and SLA launched a revolt against Khartoum in early 2003, complaining of neglect and accusing the government of arming Arab militias known as Janjaweed to burn and loot African villages. The government denies links to the Janjaweed, whom it calls outlaws.

(Additional reporting by Opheera McDoom in Khartoum)