KHARTOUM, 3 July 2004 — Rebel groups from Sudan’s troubled Darfur region said they would not attend peace talks in the Chadian capital N’Djamena, and accused the government of violating a cease-fire signed in early April.
Minni Arcua Minnawi, secretary-general of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), said he had not received any signal that talks were about to start and would not be attending.
A spokesman for the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) said they would not attend the talks in Chad because government forces continued to bomb areas of Darfur and Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, were still looting and burning African villages.
Sudan’s interior minister said on Thursday peace talks would begin in N’Djamena with the Darfur rebels on Friday, after Sudan assured the United States it would speed up political negotiations to end the fighting that the United Nations says has caused the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
“We will not go due to the violations of the cease-fire by the government,” said JEM spokesman Abu Bakr Hamid Al-Nur. “We do not want Chad to mediate for the political issues because they were not fair in the humanitarian talks.”
Chad mediated a humanitarian cease-fire signed on April 8 to allow aid workers to reach the more than one million displaced by a revolt launched last year in remote Darfur, which borders Chad. But both sides have since accused the other of violations.
Nur said on Thursday, even as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was in Darfur visiting camps for African farmers who have fled attacks from Arab militias around the capital of Northern Darfur state El-Fasher, government planes bombed areas near Nyala, the capital of Southern Darfur state.
Observers say in arid Darfur, roughly the size of France, Annan’s plane would not have gone anywhere near Nyala, so it would have been impossible to see the planes.
“The same day Annan was in El-Fasher the government bombed around Nyala and two villages were burned by Janjaweed,” Nur said from Darfur. “They bombed from around 9 a.m. (0600 GMT) until 11 a.m. (0800 GMT),” he added.
Annan’s plane landed in Darfur at around midday (0900 GMT).
He said some people were injured but he was still trying to get further details.
An armed forces statement released early this morning said they had pushed back two attacks by the rebels on Wednesday and Thursday in the same area the rebels say was bombed, near Nyala.
“This was regardless of the fact that the government has completely abided by the cease-fire agreement morally and in practice,” the statement said.
Meanwhile, the UN chief said yesterday that Khartoum had promised to protect black African refugees who fled from Sudan to Chad if they returned home.
“We are having talks with the Sudanese government and they have agreed they will ensure security so that people are able to go back home,” Annan told refugees, aid workers and reporters at a camp in eastern Chad, 70 km from the Sudan border.
