Sudan says Darfur rebels planning attacks

By Opheera McDoom

KHARTOUM, Jan 6 (Reuters) – The Sudanese government on Thursday accused rebels in the western Darfur region of planning an offensive to coincide with a peace deal that will end more than two decades of civil war in the country’s south.

SLM General-Secretary Minni Arcua Minnawi attends a news conference in London October 14, 2004. (Reuters).

The government will sign a deal to end the 21-year-old southern war on Sunday in Kenya, but it does not cover a separate conflict that erupted in 2003 in Darfur and which has displaced some 1.6 million people.

“We have received information that the two rebel movements in Darfur have a plan to increase their aggressions in the Darfur states at the same time as the peace signing ceremony in Nairobi,” Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said.

“(They want to) indicate that peace has not been reached and the Darfur problem has not yet been solved,” he told reporters.

Darfur rebels denied the charge, saying the government was attacking their positions in South and North Darfur states.

“This is what they are doing at the moment, not us,” said Minni Arcua Minnawi, the leader of Darfur’s largest rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA).

“Over the past three days they have attacked us in Sayah in South Darfur and we shot down one of their helicopters,” he said, but added that the southern deal might help Darfur peace efforts.

Several rounds of peace talks between the government and Darfur rebels in the Nigerian capital Abuja have so far failed to yield much progress. A cease-fire was agreed in April, but each side has regularly accused the other of violations.

Minnawi said he met John Garang, leader of the southern rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), in the Eritrean capital Asmara on Wednesday.

Under the southern deal, Garang will become first vice president and an SPLA spokesman said he would go to Khartoum after an interim constitution is agreed, by February 20.

“His (Garang’s) ideas were very positive,” Minnawi said. “When he becomes part of the new government he should get a role to solve the (Darfur) problem.”

But Minnawi said Garang’s role should not extend to joining African Union-sponsored Darfur peace talks in Abuja, which are tentatively set to restart on Jan. 28.

“Garang is not responsible for the genocide or the ethnic cleansing in Darfur,” Minnawi said. “His role is in the government in Khartoum, to reduce the power of the (current) government and to put pressure on them.”

Minnawi said his movement was ready to return to talks but had received no official notification yet.

After years of tribal conflict over scarce resources in arid Darfur, rebels took up arms accusing Khartoum of neglect and of using Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, to loot and burn non-Arab villages.

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