Sudan govt says will negotiate with eastern rebels
KHARTOUM, Feb 15 (Reuters) – Sudan said on Tuesday it would hold direct talks with the Beja Congress, the eastern opposition group that has carried out small-scale attacks to back its call for more power and resources for the impoverished region.
“There will be direct dialogue between us and the Beja over the issues of the east,” Federal Relations Minister Nafie Ali Nafie told reporters after a meeting between Beja and National Congress representatives in Kassala, 420 km (260 miles) east of Khartoum.
Nafie said a meeting would be held next week to establish the agenda for the talks with Beja Congress leaders in exile, but did not say when or where the negotiations themselves would take place.
The government has already reached a peace agreement to end more than two decades of conflict with rebels in southern Sudan, a deal which analysts say could act as a model for ending the conflict in the western Darfur region and unrest in the east.
Last month, police killed at least 20 ethnic Beja in Port Sudan, on the east coast, when they opened fire on demonstrators preparing for a march to demand that the government start negotiations on sharing power and resources.
The shooting led to demonstrations in Port Sudan and Kassala and the arrest of dozens of protesters. Some 25 detainees in Kassala went on hunger strike earlier this month, and a student activist there said on Tuesday most of them had been released.
The Beja were originally a nomadic people, but many moved to Port Sudan to work as labourers after famine killed their cattle and mechanised farming took over their land in the 1980s.
The Beja Congress has a military wing that has carried out minor military operations in the east. Analysts say its forces are based in the border region with Eritrea and attacks have been confined to the area of the Khartoum-Port Sudan highway.
Darfur rebels say they have links with the group.
Like other Sudanese opposition groups, the Beja Congress says the Khartoum government has neglected the remote regions of the country in favour of the centre, which is the power base of the traditional ruling elite.