KHARTOUM/TRIPOLI, 21 February 2007 — Sudanese President Omar Bashir arrived in Libya yesterday for talks he said were aimed at engaging holdout rebel groups from Darfur, where four years of violence continues to rage unabated.
The talks are aimed at “launching negotiations with groups that did not sign the Abuja agreement,” Bashir was quoted as saying by the official SUNA news agency upon arrival in the Libyan capital.
He was expected to meet Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, Eritrean President Isaias Afeworki and representatives from the many rebel groups operating in the war-torn western Sudanese region.
The meeting “represents a new step in the dialogue between the government and the armed movements and should pave the way for talks to take place later in Asmara,” SUNA quoted presidential adviser Abdallah Ali Massar as saying.
Bashir traveled with a high-level delegation including Foreign Minister Alam Akol, top aides Majzub Al-Khalifa and Nafie Ali Nafie, Presidential Affairs Minister Hassan Saleh and Investment Minister Malek Akar. He flew to Tripoli in response to an invitation by Qaddafi to start negotiations with all rebel factions.
“Bashir has earlier declared willingness to negotiate with the armed movements,” a source at the presidential palace in Khartoum told AFP on Monday.
Sudanese officials, however, would not confirm the presence in Tripoli of Darfur rebel leaders representing groups that refused to endorse the peace agreement signed in Abuja in May 2006.
Meanwhile, Janjaweed militias have been concentrating forces to the north of El-Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state in western Sudan, an African Union military source said yesterday, corroborating a UN report.
Janjaweed is the local name for militia forces drawn mainly from the nomadic Arab tribes of the area and blamed for much of the killing in Darfur over the past four years.
“They are massing ... they have vehicles with machine guns on top and they’re Janjaweed. We can’t say what their intentions are,” said the source, which asked not to be named.
