Sudan to participate in Nigeria peace talks with Darfur rebels

KHARTOUM, April 26 (AFP) — Sudan said it will participate in a new round of African Union-sponsored peace negotiations with Darfur’s ethnic minority rebels due to convene next month in the Nigerian capital Abuja.

Nigerian soldiers belonging to the Africa Union contingent in Sudan. (AFP).

Humanitarian Affairs Minister Ibrahim Mahmud Hamid announced the government’s decision, three days after Nigeria said the faltering peace talks would resume in the first two weeks of May.

“The government has agreed to take part in a new round of talks with the Darfur armed movements in Abuja during the first week of next May after agreement by the movements,” Hamid told reporters.

Darfur’s main rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Movement, said earlier this month it was prepared to resume the talks whenever the government was ready.

Sudan’s arid and impoverished western region of Darfur has been in the grip of civil war for more than two years, after black African groups rebelled against what they see as persecution from Khartoum’s Arab-led government.

Up to 300,000 people are estimated to have been killed and more than a million driven from their homes, most of them by government-backed militias.

The African Union has brokered a shaky ceasefire and sent a small force of military observers, but has struggled to find a political solution and three previous rounds of talks in Abuja made little progress.