KHARTOUM, 25 October 2007 — The Islamist Justice and Equality Movement announced yesterday that it would boycott Darfur peace talks due to open in Libya at the weekend, bringing to seven the number of rebel groups intending to stay away.
The JEM said it had taken its decision in the light of consultations with six other rebel groups which announced after preliminary talks hosted by the African Union and the United Nations on Tuesday that they would not take part in the new talks with the Sudanese government.
“The movement is not ready to take part in the masquerade that will turn Sirte into a slave market and a place of renunciation of peoples’ rights,” said a JEM statement issued on the group’s website. UN and AU mediation “has not produced a clear and precise vision of how to relaunch the peace process,” said the statement signed by spokesman Ahmed Hussein Adam and issued in the southern capital of Juba.
Besides the JEM, headed by Khalil Ibrahim, six factions of the secular Sudan Liberation Movement have said they will not attend the talks. The other recalcitrant groups are under the command of Ahmed Abdel Shafi, Ibrahim Ahmed Ibrahim, Jar Al-Nabi Abdel Karim and Mohammed Aki Kelai as well as the Northern Command faction and another group of west Darfuri rebels.
Only the SLM A faction of Khamis Abdallah Bakr has said it will attend the Sirte talks, while the SLM-Unity grouping has yet to announce a clear position. “We don’t want another Abuja,” rebel leader Abdel Karim, who attended the Juba talks, said referring to 2006 talks in the Nigerian city that led to only one rebel faction, the SLM of Minni Minawi, signing a peace deal with Khartoum.
Abdel Karim, who had initially voiced optimism over the talks, blamed continued government-backed attacks on rebels and a lack of time to agree a common position for the decision not to go to Sirte. He also rebuffed Khartoum’s accusations that southern ex-rebels who quit the national unity government on Oct. 11 wanted to use their leverage with rebels in their ongoing crisis with President Omar Bashir’s ruling National Congress party.
Presidential adviser Mustapha Osman Ismail said on Tuesday that he suspected the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement of southern former rebel leader Salva Kiir of “having sought to torpedo the Sirte negotiations.”
