One of two rebel movements engaged in peace talks with Sudan’s government, mediated by the African Union, said on Wednesday the negotiations over the Darfur region have collapsed and could be suspended for weeks.
Mohammed Ahmed Tugod, the chief negotiator for the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), said ”the negotiations have collapsed already because there are differences, strong differences between us and the Sudanese government”.
The AU-mediated talks in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, are a bid to end the conflict that erupted in west Sudan in February 2003 and has become what the United States last week called ”genocide”, claiming up to 50 000 lives and displacing almost 1,5-million people.
”The AU is now suggesting to suspend the talks for four weeks, and for us it as if the talks have collapsed,” Tugod said.
The United Nations, which has put the death toll between 30 000 and 50 000, has described the food and refugee problem created by the conflict as the world’s worst current humanitarian crisis.
Asked about a aid plan on which the rebels had been due to make their position known on Wednesday, Tugod said that Nigerian ”President [Olusegun] Obasanjo is asking us to sign the humanitarian protocol, but it is nonsense without the security agreement to sign the humanitarian protocol, so there is no reason for us…”
”At this stage, we are just waiting for the last communiqué from the AU,” he added. ”These are the facts: there is no progress, no agreement on the security issue after three weeks. That is why we will not sign the humanitarian protocol.”
The Arabic-speaking government in Khartoum has been accused by refugees and humanitarian agencies of using a proxy Arab militia, the Janjaweed, to carry out a scorched-earth strategy in Darfur.
The Janjaweed now stand accused of genocide against the black African population of the region.
Obasanjo is chairperson of the AU and organised the talks that began in Abuja on August 23. The negotiations have been stalled on disarmament and security issues for several days.
The Nigerian president met Khartoum delegates and teams from the JEM and the other rebel force, the Sudan Liberation Movement, on Tuesday, but was unable to get them to make progress.
He then asked all parties to sign a humanitarian accord that was reached, in principle, three weeks earlier, but made contingent on a security pact.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell on September 9 told a Senate hearing that evidence compiled by the US led to the conclusion that genocide has been committed in Darfur.
He said the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed militia bear responsibility and that ”genocide may still be occurring”.
Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry late on Saturday used the same word, saying the US and the UN Security Council must ”decide whether to take action to halt the killing in Darfur or remain idle in the face of the second African genocide in 10 years”.
Washington is trying to get the UN Security Council to pass a new resolution to stop the violence, but has come up against resistance. — Sapa-AFP