KHARTOUM, 26 May 2005 — Sudan’s top UN envoy blamed rebels in Darfur yesterday for delaying peace talks aimed at ending more than two years of violence and told them to get “their act together”. Jan Pronk also said the two rebel groups were refusing to cooperate with African Union mediators by pinpointing their positions on the ground.
The rebels accuse Khartoum of neglect and of using local Arab militia to loot and burn villages, a charge the government denies. Peace talks in the Nigerian capital Abuja broke down six months ago.
Pronk said the blame for the delay in resuming talks lay with the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement who had failed to come up with a common position. “There’s not been any meeting in a half year period and that’s a waste of time,” Pronk told journalists in Khartoum. “I think we can blame the (rebel) movements for not starting yet - for postponing it too long. “It is not in the interests of the people they claim to represent,” he said.
Tens of thousands have been killed in the fighting in Darfur, with more than 2 million forced from their homes. The United States has called the violence genocide, but a UN-appointed commission stopped short of this, saying war crimes and heinous crimes of humanity may have taken place. The UN Security Council has referred Darfur to the International Criminal Court.
Pronk said Sudan’s government had fully cooperated with an AU team in Darfur which is trying to pinpoint rebel and government positions. But he said the rebels were refusing to tell the AU their positions. “We are exerting pressure on them to (do) this, which is difficult at the moment,” Pronk said. “They still do not have their act together.”
Meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross warned yesterday the food supplies for millions of people in Darfur are running critically low. The region is set for chronic food shortages because farmers have not been able to sow crops ahead of the forthcoming rainy season amid ongoing violence in the western region, the ICRC said in a statement in Geneva.
“Food supplies in Darfur are running critically low and millions of people there are now dependent on food aid,” it said. “A depleted harvest at the end of the year will mean that increasing numbers of Darfuris remain completely reliant on humanitarian aid for their survival, trapped in a cycle of dependency for at least another 18 months,” the statement added.
In another development, Sudanese rebels kidnapped three ruling party politicians as they returned from a conference aimed at preventing conflict in Sudan’s east, a government official said. The JEM said in a statement it had joined forces with eastern rebels to kidnap the three men who were leaving the government-organized conference in the town of Kassala near the Eritrean border.
