ABUJA , 4 October 2005— Members of Sudan’s government and the two rebel movements fighting in the war-torn Darfur region began substantive peace talks yesterday as the African Union called for an end to a recent upsurge in violence. “We cannot understand the repeated acts of banditry in Darfur,” AU conference chairman Salim Ahmed Salim admonished government and rebel delegates, as he declared open the plenary stage of the dialogue in the Nigerian capital Abuja.
“We cannot understand the killing of innocent civilians — even in internally displaced persons’ camps — and the destruction of the homes and the social fabric of Darfur when the major participants are all here in Abuja,” he complained. The latest round of the year-old conference, aimed at bringing to an end a 30-month-old civil war which has left 300,000 dead, began on Sept. 15, but delegates have so far been divided into groups discussing side issues and setting the conference agenda.
Last week, the head of the African Union’s cease-fire monitoring team in Darfur accused the government of supporting an attack by an armed militia on villages and displaced persons’ camps in north Darfur which left around 44 people dead. The government has firmly denied involvement in the attack, and said yesterday that it remained committed to the dialogue in Abuja.
“This peace process has been launched and it will never stop. We are not satisfied with the delay so far because our people are suffering,” said Khartoum’s chief negotiator Majzoub Khalifa. “We wish these delegations to be very sincere... We want a clear determination to make the present round a decisive round, beginning today we must have a new turning point,” he added.
Meanwhile, a definitive deal with Khartoum ending 21 years of civil war poses new challenges to ex-southern rebels as they adjust to peace with formal military training, education and plenty of free time. After a routine morning drill at Malu Camp near the autonomous south’s provisional capital of Rumbek, nearly 6,000 Sudan People’s Liberation Movement troops idle away their afternoons playing poker, meandering the streets in search of cigarettes and provisions in one of the world’s most deprived and war-ravaged regions.
