ABUJA, 16 October 2004 — Peace talks between Darfur’s rebels and the Sudanese government, which had been scheduled to restart in Nigeria next week, have been moved to the Libyan capital Tripoli, the African Union Chairman said yesterday.
President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, who as the AU’s current chairman hosted a first round of talks in Abuja in August and September, announced the switch at a briefing on the crisis for Western ambassadors, his office said.
“Talks on Darfur earlier slated for Abuja had to be switched to Tripoli to secure the attendance of neighboring countries whose cooperation was crucial to lasting peace,” it said in a statement, without elaborating.
Although the text did not say when the talks were due to restart, an official in the Nigerian president’s office told AFP that they will resume in Tripoli on Oct. 21. The previous round in Abuja was suspended for one month on Sept. 18.
Sudan’s neighbors Chad and Libya are seen as having a role to play in bringing the conflict in Darfur to an end. Chad is hosting more than 200,000 Sudanese refugees, while Tripoli is seen as sympathetic to Khartoum.
The first round of AU-sponsored talks broke up after more than three weeks of inconclusive bickering between Khartoum’s delegates and the two rebel movements which have mounted an 20-month-old insurgency in Darfur.
Since the fighting broke out more than 1.4 million civilians have been driven from their homes and around 50,000 killed, according to UN estimates.
The African Union has spearheaded international attempts to resolve the crisis and is in the process of deploying a 4,500-strong peacekeeping force from around five African countries to Sudan to oversee the peace process.
Obasanjo said yesterday that a battalion of Rwandan troops would arrive in Sudan this weekend, while a 770-strong Nigerian contingent would be in place by the end of the month and the force would be complete by the end of November.
