ADDIS ABABA, 18 July 2004 — Rebels from Sudan’s Darfur region walked out of African Union-mediated peace efforts yesterday, saying they would return only when the government had met their six conditions for talks. The move deals a blow to fragile efforts to end an 18-month-old conflict in the west of Africa’s biggest country that has created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
“We’ll stay here overnight and then leave (for home),” Ahmed Tugod Lissan, coordinator for the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), said after meeting African Union mediators in Addis Ababa. “By refusing to accept our demands the government in Khartoum is saying that it is not prepared to discuss the disarmament of the Janjawid who are conducting ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Africans in Sudan,” Lissan said.
He said he was speaking on behalf of JEM and the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), two rebel groups who launched a revolt in February 2003 in the west of the oil-producing country after long conflict between African villagers and Arab nomads. The United Nations says fighting has displaced more than one million people, and as many as 30,000 have been killed.
Disarmament of the Janjawid Arab militia is one of six conditions the JEM and SLA have set for participation in AU-mediated peace talks aimed at ending the bloodshed. The other conditions are: provide access for an inquiry into genocide charges, prosecute criminals who committed genocide or ethnic cleansing, allow unimpeded humanitarian access, free prisoners of war and set a neutral venue for future talks.
Sudan’s government, facing worldwide protests over the violence, says it is prepared to discuss the demands as part of peace talks but not as a prerequisite for those talks. Lissan said rebel officials would hold a courtesy meeting with AU Commission chairman Alpha Oumar Konare, the top civil servant of the 53-nation body, before leaving.
Neither the SLA nor JEM met government delegates since Konare launched the latest bid to restart Darfur’s peace process at AU headquarters in Addis Ababa on Thursday. The rebels accuse the government of arming Janjawid Arab militias to loot and burn African villages in a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Khartoum denies the charge.
AU officials who struggled for three days to convene a rebel-government meeting said their task had never looked very promising because Darfur’s top rebel leaders had chosen instead to attend a Sudanese opposition conference held in Eritrea.
JEM official Ahmed Hussain Adam confirmed that JEM leader Khalid Ibrahim was at a meeting in Asmara of Sudan’s opposition umbrella group the National Democratic Alliance. The gathering was discussing how to build stronger links between all anti-Khartoum groups, he said. JEM was not a member of the alliance, he said, but added: “We all represent marginalized sectors of society and our demands are more or less the same.”
The rebels also insisted that Khartoum step up efforts to counter Darfur’s humanitarian crisis, where a major famine is looming, and recommit itself to an April 8 cease-fire — which both sides are accused of violating. They additionally called for an investigation into war crimes such as “ethnic cleansing” and the prosecution of all perpetrators. “Without fulfilling the demands ... there is no reason for us to enter into a substantial political dialogue,” with Khartoum, Adam explained.
The United Nations says the fighting has displaced more than one million people, and as many as 30,000 have been killed.
Meanwhile, Sudan’s jailed Islamist opposition leader Hassan Turabi and dozens of other prisoners have ended a two-week hunger strike staged to protest their detention without trial, his wife said yesterday. Wisal Al-Mahdi also told AFP that she and other family members had been allowed to visit Turabi for the first time in nearly three weeks.
She quoted her husband as saying that the detainees had conditionally agreed to end their strike on Thursday. Wisal said Turabi declined to specify the conditions but that she hoped they included the detainees’ release.
Twelve detainees were freed last week in what officials said was part of a periodic “revision” of individual cases, though Islamist sources said it was because of their deteriorating health as a result of the hunger strike, begun on June 30.
Turabi, a one-time mentor of President Omar Bashir, is awaiting trial on a raft of offenses against the state including incitement to sedition, sabotage and undermining the regime.
