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/ 21 November 2007
Sudan’s president promised on Wednesday there would be no return to civil war in Africa’s biggest country in a speech that sought to calm tensions over a growing stand-off with the south. President Omar Hassan al-Bashir called on his political opponents to work with him ”for the homeland”.
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/ 19 November 2007
Sudan has formally charged 28 opposition politicians and army officers with plotting to overthrow the government, more than four months after they were arrested, their supporters said on Monday. The 28, including the head of the opposition Umma Party for Reform and Renewal, Mubarak al-Fadil, were taken from their homes at gunpoint in July.
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/ 18 November 2007
Former southern rebels on Sunday accused Sudan’s president of ”threatening and calling for war” in speech he gave in honour of a government-allied militia charged with a string of atrocities. Pagan Amum, Secretary General of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, said he deplored the comments by President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.
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/ 18 November 2007
Sudan’s president said on Saturday he would not budge ”an inch” on the contested borders of the oil-rich Abyei region. Khartoum and former southern rebels the Southern People’s Revolutionary Movement (SPLM) are divided over the demarcation of Abyei, the source of much of Sudan’s energy reserves.
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/ 4 November 2007
Sudan’s former foes have agreed on steps to implement a 2005 peace deal, First Vice-President Salva Kiir said on Sunday, indicating the country’s worst political crisis in years may be resolved soon. The announcement raised hopes that ministers from the former southern rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement’s will soon return to the national coalition government.
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/ 30 October 2007
Darfur rebels boycotting peace talks in Libya said on Tuesday they would meet envoys from an African Union-United Nations mediation team but specified conditions that gave little hope they would change their positions. Mediators had hoped to unite the rival rebel factions before peace talks opened in Libya on October 27.
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/ 29 October 2007
Darfur rebels accused Sudanese government forces of attacking an area along the border with Chad in violation of a unilateral ceasefire the government declared at the opening of peace talks in Libya. Rebels from two factions, which did not attend the talks, said on Monday the government had attacked the Jabel Moun area along the Chad-Sudan border on Saturday.
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/ 25 October 2007
A Darfur rebel group has attacked a Sudanese oilfield and kidnapped a Canadian and an Iraqi worker, a leader of the group said on Thursday, vowing further attacks. ”We attacked Defra oilfield and kidnapped two foreign workers, one is Canadian and another is Iraqi,” said Abdelaziz el-Nur Ashr, field commander for the Justice and Equality Movement.
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/ 24 October 2007
The Islamist Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) announced on Wednesday that it would boycott Darfur peace talks due to open in Libya on the weekend, bringing to seven the number of rebel groups intending to stay away. The JEM said it had taken its decision in the light of consultations with six other rebel groups.
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/ 22 October 2007
Three Sudanese soldiers were killed when government forces attacked a refugee camp in Darfur, the second assault reported on a shelter for displaced people in less than a week, the United Nations said on Monday. The fighting was the latest in a series of clashes just days before planned peace talks.
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/ 21 October 2007
Around 50 people have been killed in three days of tribal clashes in the western Sudanese region of Kordofan, government officials were quoted as saying on Sunday. Dozens were wounded in the fighting sparked by the killing of one person in a land dispute.
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/ 19 October 2007
Government-backed militias have attacked a refugee camp over the past three days, killing six people and injuring 14 during their search for rebels from Sudan’s Darfur region, witnesses said on Friday. The United Nations confirmed there had been shooting in the Kalma camp outside Nyala, capital of South Darfur, over the past two days.
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/ 19 October 2007
Sudan stared down the barrels of two major crises this week as a split in the country’s coalition government coincided with fears that growing violence in war-torn Darfur could derail peace efforts in the troubled region. As the Mail & Guardian went to press, leaders of the two main partners in Sudan’s coalition government were due to hold emergency meetings to try and find a way out of an impasse that threatens a key peace deal in the country.
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/ 18 October 2007
Crisis talks between Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and southern leader Salva Kiir ended on Thursday without agreement on getting his former rebels to rejoin the unity government they quit a week ago. The meeting at the presidential palace in Khartoum came the day after al-Bashir authorised a Cabinet reshuffle.
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/ 18 October 2007
The two sides in Sudan’s national coalition meet on Thursday to try to salvage their fragile peace deal after disenchanted former southern rebels walked out of the government. President Omar Hassan al-Bashir will meet First Vice-President Salva Kiir, chairperson of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, in Khartoum.
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/ 17 October 2007
The United Nations World Food Programme on Wednesday condemned the killing of three of its truck drivers in the violence-stricken western Sudanese region of Darfur. Two of the men were killed on Tuesday in south Darfur as they were returning from delivering supplies near the scene of an attack on an African Union base.
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/ 16 October 2007
Sudan’s president met former southern rebels on Tuesday for the first time since they withdrew their ministers from the government, triggering the country’s worst political crisis since a 2005 peace deal. Last week members of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement withdrew from a coalition government, saying they wanted progress on key elements of the 2005 agreement.
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/ 12 October 2007
Sudan’s National Congress Party (NCP) of President Omar al-Bashir on Friday criticised the decision by former southern rebels to withdraw from the Khartoum government. "The heart of the problem is that a group within the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement wants to end our partnership," the northern NCP’s number two, Nafie Ali Nafie, said.
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/ 11 October 2007
Darfur peace talks, aimed at stopping chaotic violence plaguing Sudan’s west, will be a ”moment of truth”, United Nations envoy Jan Eliasson said on Thursday. He urged all of the more than a dozen fractured Darfur rebel factions to attend the talks due to start in Libya on October 27 and said an urgent ceasefire would be the priority.
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/ 10 October 2007
Fighting has erupted between the only Darfur rebel group to have signed a 2006 peace accord and Sudanese troops, the United Nations said on Wednesday after the rebels accused Khartoum of attacking a town the rebels control. The United Nations said that exchanges of fire took place on between the Sudan Liberation Army faction of Minni Minawi and the Sudanese army.
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/ 10 October 2007
Sudan’s army has denied attacking the only Darfur rebel faction to sign a peace deal with Khartoum, saying tribal clashes were to blame for the fighting that killed 45 people in Muhajiriya town. The Sudan Liberation Army, led by Minni Arcua Minnawi, was the only one of three negotiating rebel factions to sign the May 2006 deal and become part of government.
Sudan’s army bombed Muhajiriya, the main Darfur town held by the only rebel faction to sign a 2006 peace deal with Khartoum, injuring at least two dozen people, the African Union force commander said on Tuesday. Martin Luther Agwai said it was not yet clear why the fighting began on Monday.
A Sudanese army air and ground assault killed at least 45 people in the Darfur town of Muhajiriya, where bodies littered the streets amid burned out buildings, rebels who control the area said on Tuesday. ”Until now the number of dead civilians are at least 40, with 80 missing and a large number of injured,” the Sudan Liberation Army said.
Sudanese government troops and allied militia on Monday attacked a town belonging to the only Darfur rebel faction to sign a 2006 peace deal, rebels said. ”Government planes have attacked Muhajiriya, which belongs to us, and government forces and Janjaweed militia are fighting our forces” said Khalid Abakar, a senior representative from the Sudan Liberation Army.
A Darfur town has been burned to the ground and its residents forced to flee, days after 10 African Union (AU) troops were killed there in an attack, a joint United Nations/African Union mission said on Sunday. The report confirmed rebel statements on Friday that the remote settlement of Haskanita had been all but destroyed.
A key Darfur rebel leader warned on Saturday his movement will not attend peace talks this month in Libya unless the United Nations and the African Union can convince a rival group to unite its splinter factions.Khalil Ibrahim, leader of the Justice and Equality Movement, had said he would attend talks set to begin October 27 in Tripoli, Libya.
Nelson Mandela’s group of ”elders” warned of signs of deep and growing division in Sudan as they ended their first official mission to the country, a visit marred by violence and confrontations with security forces. ”We heard the tale of two countries,” Archbishop Desmond Tutu told reporters at a press conference at the close of the trip.
Ethiopia on Thursday pledged 5 000 troops to a United Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission in Sudan’s war-ravaged Darfur region. The 26 000-strong joint mission is to replace a hard-pressed AU force that lacks experience, equipment and cash and has been unable to stop the conflict.
International elder statesmen, including two Nobel Peace Prize winners, said on Thursday that Darfur was rife with violence and deeply divided after returning from the Sudanese region. They warned rape was widespread and being ignored by the Sudanese authorities and also urged Khartoum to hand over war-crimes suspects for trial at the International Criminal Court.
The African Union on Monday began probing an unprecedented attack on one of its bases in Sudan’s war-ravaged Darfur that left 10 peacekeepers dead and 25 missing, vowing to punish those responsible. ”The inquiry is under way and we will make its conclusions public,” AU Mission in Sudan spokesperson Noureddine Mezni said.
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade said on Monday he would pull his country’s troops out of Darfur if it was determined that African peacekeepers who were killed at the weekend were not equipped to defend themselves. Twenty African Union soldiers were killed or injured and 40 missing after an assault on the Haskanita base in Darfur on Saturday night.
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/ 30 September 2007
Ten African Union (AU) soldiers were killed and 50 were missing after armed men launched an assault on an AU base in Darfur, the worst attack on AU troops since they deployed in Sudan’s violent west in 2004. The AU called it a ”deliberate and sustained” assault by about 30 vehicles, which overran and looted the peacekeepers’ camp on Saturday night.