ABUJA, 30 April 2006 — Special UN and African Union envoys in the Darfur crisis arrived in the Nigerian capital Abuja overnight to push for a peace deal as an AU deadline for today is drawing to a close, AU officials said yesterday. “The two UN and AU officials arrived in Abuja late Friday as part of intensive efforts to convince the parties to sign the peace agreement submitted by the AU mediators,” AU spokesman at the peace talks, Noureddine Mezni, told AFP. “The top officials of the international community will participate in all the processes at this decisive and difficult moment,” he said.
Eleven field commanders of the Sudan Liberation Movement’s Menawi faction also arrived in Abuja late Friday to ensure that a deal is struck, other AU officials told AFP. UN special envoy Jan Pronk, special AU envoy on Sudan, Ahmed Salim Ahmed, and the AU’s special envoy on Darfur, Baba Gana Kingibe, were to hold a series of meetings with all parties in the crisis as well as international partners to ensure that the UN-approved AU deadline is strictly adhered to by all, a top official of the AU mediation team said.
Salim on Friday held a lengthy meeting with the AU mediation team while the international partners also met separately with the Khartoum delegation at the talks, the two factions of the SLM, and the Justice and Equality Movement. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo on Thursday and Friday appealed to these groups to sign the peace agreement in the interest of the suffering people of Darfur and the African continent.
The international partners acting as facilitators or observers at the peace talks, currently in their seventh and final round in Nigeria, are Britain, Canada, the European Union, France, the League of Arab States, Norway, the United Nations and the United States.
The international partners this week intensified their pressure on the Sudanese parties to sign the peace deal as the AU set deadline closes, delegates told AFP.
“The AU mediators at this stage of the talks would like to play the role of facilitators, explaining grey areas in the AU peace document to the parties to the conflict,” Mezni reiterated yesterday.
The AU will not change the document it presented to the parties, he insisted. While the Khartoum government delegation has responded to the AU document, the rebel movements were yet to do so as of late Friday, AU officials said.
“We are still studying the document and we in the movements are likely to have a joint position which we will submit to the AU mediators,” JEM chief negotiator Ahmed Tugod told AFP. The presence of some field commanders in Abuja is expected to allay the fears of the fighters in the field that “they were carried along during efforts that finally led to the peace deal signature,” a member of the SLM delegation, who demanded anonymity, told AFP.
