African Union-sponsored talks to end the slaughter of tens of thousands of people in Sudan’s western Darfur region have collapsed with two rebel groups saying the government still isn’t implementing existing peace agreements.
”These talks are now finished,” said Ahmed Hussain Adam, speaking for both his Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudanese Liberation Army. ”We are leaving Addis Ababa.”
African mediators worked to try and save the negotiations, which got under way on Thursday at the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa.
But the rebels insisted the government fulfil a list of previous commitments before beginning a fresh round of talks. The two delegations walked out of the negotiations on Saturday without having met their government counterparts.
Ibrahim Ahmed Ibrahim, spokesperson for the government delegation, said Sudan is not prepared to accept preconditions.
”The demands of the rebels are not acceptable and it is a disrespect to the AU,” Ibrahim said. ”It is a delaying tactic … the rebels are not serious.”
But Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said the government remains open to further negotiations.
”This round will not be the last one,” he told reporters in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.
AU mediators were working to bring both sides back to the negotiating table.
”No one of them told us the negotiations have ended,” said Adam Thiam, spokesperson for AU Commission chairperson Alpha Oumar Konare.
Chief among the rebels’ demands is an internationally supervised timeline for Sudan to make good on its promise to disarm the shadowy Arab militias accused of killing tens of thousands of black Africans and driving more than a million from their homes in a systematic campaign of terror.
The insurgents are also seeking government commitments to respect previous agreements, allow an international inquiry into the killings, prosecute those responsible, lift restrictions on humanitarian workers and release prisoners of war.
Finally, the insurgents want a more neutral venue for future negotiations, arguing that Ethiopia has close ties with Sudan.
”There’s no progress being made because the government has refused these demands,” said Adam.
He said government-backed attacks continued as recently as Thursday, when militia fighters known as the Janjaweed raided the southern Darfur village of Majreia, killing 17 people. His claim could not be independently verified.
Most of the rebels’ demands were contained in a widely ignored ceasefire deal signed on April 8 with the government.
Sudan also signed an agreement with United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan on July 3 calling for disarming the Janjaweed, deploying soldiers, facilitating aid and allowing international troops and monitors into Darfur.
However, Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said on Thursday in Khartoum that his government needs more time to implement its commitments in Darfur, a vast and remote region the size of Iraq.
Nomadic Arab tribes have long been in conflict with their African farming neighbours over Darfur’s dwindling water and usable land. The tensions exploded into violence in February 2003 when the two African rebel groups took up arms over what they regard as unjust treatment by the government in their struggle with Arab countrymen.
The rebels, and the refugees, accuse the government of arming and providing air support to the Janjaweed, who have torched hundreds of villages in a scorched-earth policy that human rights groups equate with ethnic cleansing. The government denies any involvement in the militia attacks.
The UN estimates up to 30 000 people have been killed in Darfur, but some analysts put the figure much higher. The death toll could surge to more than 350 000 if aid doesn’t reach more than two million people soon, the United States Agency for International Development has warned.
Fighting in Darfur has continued even as peace negotiations advanced in a separate 21-year civil war in which rebels from the mainly animist and Christian south took up arms against the predominantly Arab and Muslim north. Both sides in Darfur are Muslim.
For much of this time, international attention was focused on the Iraq war. But in April, as the world marked 10 years since the 1994 slaughter that killed at least 500 000 in Rwanda, Annan warned that a new genocide could unfold in Sudan.
Since then, pressure has mounted on Sudan to end the slaughter.
The latest peace initiative follows a concerted diplomatic push by Annan and US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who visited the region earlier this month.
Powell said on Friday that he expects to hear from US experts next week on whether Sudan officials should be charged with genocide. — Sapa-AP