ABUJA, 15 September 2004 — African Union-brokered peace talks between the Sudanese government and Darfur rebel leaders bogged down again yesterday, barely 10 minutes after delegates resumed negotiations following a three-day pause. Delegates said that mediators had adjourned the session after hearing from the warring parties that there had been no change in their positions since Friday’s breakdown in dialogue.
The peace talks were adjourned Friday after the Sudanese government rejected an African Union plan to restore security in the western region of Darfur, where a 19-month conflict has claimed around 50,000 lives and forced 1.4 million from their homes.
An international observer at the talks told AFP that the chief mediator, Nigeria’s Algabid Hamid, “indicated at the start of the meeting (yesterday) that intense negotiations had been under way for four days.”
Hamid “explained to the delegations that it had not been possible to make changes to the AU proposals because the two sides were camping on their positions,” the observer said. The Nigerian chief mediator was to meet later yesterday with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, current head of the African Union, to try to find a way out of the deadlock, he added.
Earlier, a delegate from one of two Darfur rebel groups at the talks confirmed that neither the government nor rebels had budged from their positions since the talks adjourned last week.
“The secretariat asked us if there was some changes in our positions but the parties are maintaining their positions,” said Bahar Ibrahim, a delegate from the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM). “The talks will probably resume later,” he added.
Sudan’s Deputy Foreign Minister Najeib Abdelwahab, who is attending the talks in the Nigerian capital Abuja, blamed the United States for the deadlock. Last week, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said that Sudan’s Arab-led regime was guilty of “genocide” following their bloody crackdown on the black African minority tribes suspected of supporting Darfur’s rebels.
“The negotiations have been very much undermined by Mr. Powell’s declaration, which led our brothers (the rebels) to stay very firmly on their positions,” Abdelwahab told reporters at Abuja’s International Conference Center. “The United States need to inject new blood into these negotiations by sending the right signals to our brothers who are using this statement not to move forward in the talks,” said Abdelwahab.
