Sudan to Hold Darfur Talks by Month End

KHARTOUM, 21 February 2005 — The Sudanese government said talks to end violence in Darfur would resume at the end of February, but rebels said they had not been told of the date and would need more time to prepare themselves for any talks. The rebel Sudan Liberation Movement said a return to talks depended on the government creating a “conducive atmosphere”, and that the African Union, which is sponsoring the talks, had not given it a date.

SLM spokesman Adam Ali Shogar said yesterday the government must within two weeks withdraw from areas it has captured since a much-violated cease-fire was signed and respect a no-fly zone before the rebels would consider a return to talks.

“We have not received any notification from the African Union (AU) regarding the restarting of the talks,” he said. “If the government delivers on its pledges and creates a conducive atmosphere then we will return to talks,” he said.

SLM Chairman Abdel Wahid Mohammed Ahmed Nour said the AU must force the government to implement agreements signed in November on security and humanitarian issues for peace talks to have any meaning. He told Reuters the SLM also needed at least 20 days to prepare for any talks.

Two British aid workers were briefly detained by ethnic minority rebels in Darfur but released unharmed yesterday, an embassy official told AFP. The director of British charity Kids for Kids, Patricia Parker, and her son, Alastair King-Smith, were held overnight by SLM fighters, said embassy political adviser Mark Byron-Richardson.

“They are back in (the North Darfur state capital of) El Fasher and are in good health,” he told AFP, declining to elaborate. The official SUNA news agency quoted him as saying that the two Britons had been detained “as a result of misunderstanding of their mission by a group of the Sudan Liberation Army,” one of two rebel factions in the region. A government minister accused the rebels of failing to carry out their obligations under a widely violated 10-month-old cease-fire and said that had led to the Britons’ detention.