KHARTOUM, 21 September 2007 — A major Darfur rebel group has called for peace talks with the Sudanese government due to be held in Libya next month to be delayed, saying a cease-fire must first take hold in the war-ravaged region.

“The timing of the forthcoming round of peace negotiations on Darfur — as scheduled to convene in Tripoli on Oct. 27 — needs to be reconsidered,” Sudan Liberation Movement leader Ahmed Abdel Shafi said in a statement received by AFP yesterday.

“True confidence-building measures are needed urgently on the ground. The first step should be a total halt to military operations in Darfur,” Abdel Shafi said, accusing Khartoum of sponsoring “daily crimes” in the region.

Abdel Shafi’s SLM faction said that Khartoum and the increasingly fractious rebel groups need a “few months of total calm in Darfur in order to prove their commitment to the new cease-fire arrangement.”

“This would in turn create a situation of confidence and good will that could lead to viable political negotiations,” Abdel Shafi said. It had been hoped that the crunch talks in the Libyan capital between Darfur rebel groups and the Sudanese government might help to bring a definitive end to more than four years of violence.

However, the founding father of the Darfur rebellion, Abdel Wahid Mohammed Nur, who does not recognize the legitimacy of several of the other rebel factions, has already said he will not go to Tripoli. “Without security on the ground, I will never negotiate,” Nur told AFP on Wednesday by telephone from self-imposed exile in Paris.

Abdel Shafi took over as official SLM leader after Nur was ejected in July 2006, while the SLM faction of Mini Minnawi was the only rebel group to sign a peace agreement with the government in Nigeria in May 2006.

In New York, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in an interview aired yesterday that the United Nations would be “vigilant” in ensuring Sudan complies with Security Council demands to allow humanitarian assistance to get to Darfur’s refugees.

Speaking on CNN television, Ban said he had been assured by Sudan’s President Omar Bashir that the aid for the millions of suffering people in the war-torn region would flow smoothly.

“He will faithfully comply with all of the Security Council resolutions and his government’s own commitment,” Ban said. “We will be very vigilant in urging him and in monitoring the implementation of his commitment.”

“We will be very vigilant in urging him and in monitoring the implementation of his commitment.” Ban also said that the deployment of a joint African Union-UN peacekeeping force in the region has made “credible progress.”