Dissident Darfur rebels said on Friday they would sign an African Union-mediated peace deal for the troubled western Sudanese region and urged hold-outs to join them.
Despite missing a Wednesday midnight deadline to agree to the pact or face possible sanctions, they said the AU was preparing an annex to the May 5 accord for them, and hopefully other groups, to ink in the coming days.
The rebels who claim to represent splinter factions of the two groups — a wing of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) — that have thus far rejected the deal, said they were only interested in peace.
”We are all Darfurians, so we are calling on all the rebel leaders to come and join the peace process to stop the suffering,” Abdul Majid Hassan of the JEM-Aburisha faction told reporters at AU headquarters in Addis Ababa.
”We are separated, but we are all Darfurians, so we appeal to the leaders [of the main JEM faction] to sign the peace agreement,” said Abdulrahim Adam Abdurahim Aburisha. ”We hope they will change their minds.”
So far, only the main SLM faction has signed the peace agreement, with the other rebels refusing to append their signatures, arguing the agreement falls well short of addressing their demands.
But Issa Mohamed Adam Basi, a political adviser to the hold-out SLM faction led by Abdel Wahid Mohammed al-Nur, urged his superiors to drop their objections for the good of the people of Darfur.
”We are not against our leaders’ opinion, but we call on them to sign,” he said. ”If they don’t sign, we are ready to sign as a faction as soon as the AU sets a date.”
The peace agreement is aimed at ending three years of civil conflict in the western region of Sudan, which has left about 300 000 people dead, according to some estimates, and 2,4-million homeless.
On Thursday, the AU expressed ”deep regret” at the failure of the hold-outs to meet the deadline set for signing the deal, but said it was working on modalities to allow willing parties to associate themselves with the peace pact.
The pan-African body also warned groups that continue to reject the accord are still bound by a shaky ceasefire agreement that AU peacekeepers now in the region would rigorously enforce. — AFP
