KHARTOUM, 26 September 2007 — Darfur rebel leader Khalil Ibrahim said yesterday he would carry on fighting during upcoming peace talks until a final settlement is reached to end the conflict in western Sudan. Ibrahim, head of the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), also said he was dismissing his deputy, Bahr Idriss Abu Garda, accusing him of secret meetings with the government to undermine the movement.
“We will not cease fire before we reach a political settlement,” Ibrahim told Reuters from Darfur. “Ceasing fire is a termination of the resistance and revolution.” Sudanese President Omar Hassan Bashir said during a visit this month to Italy that he would observe a cease-fire in Darfur when talks with rebels, scheduled for Oct. 27 in Libya, begin.
Ibrahim, whose group has been the mainstay behind fighting with the government in the far-east of Darfur in recent months, said JEM would attend the talks but it would not lay down arms. “There is no good will from the other side. This is only a trick,” he said, adding the three rebel movements that negotiated in previous talks until May 2006 had abided by an earlier truce, which the government violated.
Only one faction signed the 2006 peace deal, which has been rejected by many in Darfur as inadequate. Since then the rebels have split into more than a dozen rival groups. But a recent military alliance between JEM and Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) Unity faction has made them the biggest military threat to Khartoum in Darfur.
And in a sign of further rebel splits, Ibrahim said Abu Garda, a veteran of the conflict, was sacked and the movement would reshuffle its executive to strengthen ranks before talks.
Rebels have often accused Khartoum of trying to divide them and mediators have described government attempts to negotiate deals with individual commanders as “unhelpful” as rebels worked to reach a common platform ahead of peace talks.
