ABUJA, 7 September 2004 — African Union-brokered peace talks for Sudan’s western Darfur region stalled over the sensitive issues of security and disarmament yesterday, as they began their third week, officials said. “There appears to be deadlock because the two sides are sticking to their hard-line positions,” Gen. Festus Okonkwo, commander of the African Union cease-fire monitoring team in Darfur, told AFP at the Abuja talks.
The Khartoum government is demanding that the rebels be disarmed at the same time as the pro-regime Janjaweed militia, while rebel leaders insist they will not demobilize until their Arab enemies do so, Okonkwo said. AU officials said they were seeking an opportunity to bring both sides to a compromise. “We are looking for them to meet the president so that we can have his comments on the draft protocol and possibly talk to the two sides so that they can soften their stances,” the general said, referring to Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo who is the current head of the AU.
The chief negotiator of the rebel Justice and Equality Movement, Ahmed Mohammed Tugod, called for the AU to deploy troops to Darfur with a specific mandate to disarm the Janjaweed, Khartoum’s proxy militia which has been accused of massacring Darfur’s black African population and systematically raping women.
Some 300 soldiers from Nigeria and Rwanda are in Darfur on a UN mandate to protect 133 unarmed military observers monitoring a shaky cease-fire signed in April between Darfur’s two main rebel groups and forces loyal to the Khartoum government.
“Since the Sudanese government has failed intentionally to disarm the Janjaweed, we are asking for a clear mandate to be given to the AU troops to get into Darfur and disarm the Janjaweed,” Tugod told AFP. Tugod also said the rebels considered disarmament a political issue and did not intend raising it at this stage of the talks.
“It is a political issue. When we come to the item on political issues, we will state our position. But if they don’t agree, it will then be the end of the talks.”
JEM spokesman Ahmed Hussain Adam said the two rebel groups met Obasanjo on Sunday and presented their positions to him. “We told Obasanjo that the issue of cantonment can’t be done at this time because it has to be part of a comprehensive restructuring of the Sudanese armed forces. We want the army to be national,” he stated.
A spokesman for the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement, Abdelhafiz Mustapha Musa, insisted that the cantonment of forces could come only after a political settlement. “No rebel in this world will disarm before the political settlement because the problem in Darfur is political. The unfortunate thing is that the government does not want to disarm the Janjaweed and withdraw their troops and extend the AU mandate,” he said.
“We have submitted our responses to the draft protocol on security to the AU. We did that this morning and we are waiting for them to invite us to the meeting,” Musa said.
