Sudan’s eastern rebels gather to prepare for talks with Khartoum

KHARTOUM, March 26 (AFP) — Sudan’s eastern rebels gathered for a three-day conference in rebel-held territory Sunday to thrash out a common stance ahead of promised talks with Khartoum.

Children from the nomadic tribe of the Rashaidas from eastern Sudan, they wait on a roadside with their parents for people to come buy their smuggled goods in Tesseney, western Eritrea. (AFP).

The East Sudan Front, a coalition of Beja and Rashaidah Arab rebel groups, will “draw up a vision for negotiations with the government”, said Abdel Qadir Bakash of the Beja Congress.

The meeting is being held in the rebel-held town of Hameshkurib in Kassala state on the border with Eritrea, he told AFP.

Bakash complained that Khartoum had prevented rebel leaders based in government-held territory from travelling to the town for the conference.

Like their counterparts in the Darfur region of western Sudan, the ethnic minority rebels in the eastern states of Red Sea and Kassala complain of marginalisation by the Arab-dominated regime in Khartoum.

Sudan’s biggest rebel group, the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army, once championed their cause but signed a landmark peace deal with the government in January that applied only to the south and disputed adjacent districts.

Both the Beja Congress and the Free Lions group, drawn from the descendants of 19th century immigrants from the Arabian peninsula, pulled out of the main opposition allinace last year complaining that the mainstream northern political parties were ignoring their interests in talks with Khartoum.

Beja demonstrations in the eastern city of Port Sudan in January sparked a security force action in which at least 14 people — and possibly as many as 23 — were killed.

The unrest sparked a wave of arrests of Beja activists across the east but also prompted government promises of peace talks with the Beja Congress.

The two rebel groups merged in the East Sudan Front the following month.