KHARTOUM, 24 July 2003 — Rebels in the Darfur region of western Sudan have agreed to a two- to three-week truce in their six-month-old war with the government, a Khartoum newspaper said yesterday. The agreement was reached after three weeks of talks with a government delegation in the rebel stronghold of Kornoy, the independent daily Al-Sahafa said in a report from the North Darfur State capital of Al-Fasher.
The rebel Sudan Liberation Movement submitted a list of 12 demands, including its formal recognition as a political party, after the two sides agreed to settle their differences through negotiation, the paper said. The SLM also demanded that the government stop deploying Arab tribal militiamen against its forces and cease branding its supporters as bandits and highwaymen.
Nile River State governor Abdullah Ali Masar and 30 other members of the 40-strong official delegation already arrived back in government-held territory Tuesday and were expected to travel on to Khartoum to deliver the rebels’ demands, Al-Sahafa said. The delegation, which also included Education Minister Ahmed Babikir Nahar, were all Zaghawas, the main ethnic group within the SLM, the paper added.
In another development, Sudanese rebel leader John Garang told Kenyan television yesterday that if the Khartoum government did not accept peace proposals suggested by mediators, there would be no end to their war. Sudan’s warring factions have been trying to negotiate an end to their 20-year-old conflict for the past year, and analysts say they have reached a crunch point.
Mediators have put forward suggestions on how to resolve many of the issues still to be resolved, but the government has rejected the document and says it wants a new set of proposals before it returns to the negotiating table.
“Khartoum wants to negotiate again. No, we will not go that route,” leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army Garang told private station Kenya Television Network, monitored by the BBC.
