KHARTOUM, 8 January 2005 — Sudan accused ethnic minority rebels in the Darfur region yesterday of trying to sabotage peace with the south by stepping up operations ahead of the signing of a final deal with southern rebels.
Security authorities have uncovered a “subversive plot” by Darfur rebels that includes increasing attacks in the region, claimed Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail, quoted by state-run Sudan News Agency.
He said the escalation had been timed to coincide with the signing of a peace deal with the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and designed to “show that peace is incomplete and that the Darfur problem is still there.”
Khartoum and the SPLM will on Sunday ink a final peace agreement to end the country’s 21-year civil war, which has claimed some 1.5 million lives, but the deal does not cover a separate conflict in the western region of Darfur.
The conflict flared in February 2003 when two main rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement, launched a revolt against Khartoum, demanding an equal share of national development.
It has so far claimed at least 70,000 lives and displaced 1.6 million people.
The warring parties in Darfur signed a cease-fire agreement in April 2004 in Chad and a security protocol later in the year in the Nigerian capital Abuja, but each side accuses the other of persistently violating the truce.
Ismail said the rebels were preparing for a new offensive in Darfur that was aimed at undermining “the peace momentum” in the south, but added that these efforts were doomed to fail.
Sudan’s intelligence chief Salah Gosh told reporters yesterday that rebels from southern Sudan will make up a quarter of the personnel in Sudan’s large intelligence agencies under a post-peace government.
Gosh, who rarely speaks to the media, said the new post-peace national intelligence agency would be 26 percent drawn from the SPLM’s own security forces, and the process would take place over two and a half years. “We welcome the southerners so that they will become an inseparable part of the security services,” he said.
According to UN officials when peace finally comes to southern Sudan, half a million people made refugees by the war would be hoping to return home.
The UN refugee agency said that 500,000 southern Sudanese are presently living as refugees in Uganda, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Central African Republic and Egypt, and that Sunday’s peace accord will serve as an initial step in preparing for their eventual return to their home country.
