13/05/2005

Sudan's Darfur rebels set to resume talks with Khartoum

The two main rebel movements in Sudan's western Darfur province announced Friday they were ready to resume talks with the Khartoum government to end a war which has killed at least 180,000 people.

"We are committed to resuming the negotiations in Abuja (the Nigerian capital), under the aegis of the African Union, with preconditions," the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) said in a joint statement issued in Rome.

Leaders of both groups had spent a week in discussions with the Roman Catholic Sant'Egidio Community, founded in 1968, which has been a key player in mediation behind the scenes to sort out some of Africa's thorniest conflicts, such as a long civil war which ravaged Mozambique.

"We back the request made by the international community for a reinforcement of an African Union peace-keeping force (already deployed in Darfur) and an extension of its mandate, including the protection of civilians," the SLM and JEM said.

Talks between the rebels, mainly fighting for the rights of Darfur's black African population in the face of what they consider repression and neglect by Khartoum's largely Arab, Islamist government, broke down in Abuja in December last year.

The rebels launched an uprising in February 2003 and Khartoum responded with air strikes and the use by proxy of a well-armed local Arabic militia known as the Janjaweed, which has been accused of genocide by human rights groups and last year by the administration in Washington.

Aid agencies and UN bodies estimate the number of Darfur villagers displaced by the conflict at more than two million, many inside Sudan and others across the border in camps in Chad. The death toll ranges from 180,000 at the lowest estimate to as high as 300,000.

Khartoum, which denies backing militias in a scorched-earth campaign and attacks on villages, has come under pressure from African nations, the United States and other countries to negotiate for peace in Darfur, as it reached a series of agreements with a major rebel force in the south, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, to end the continent's longest-running civil war.

The Darfur rebels had already said they were prepared to resume talks after a meeting early in May with Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi in Tripoli.

In Friday's statement, they urged "the international community to made every effort possible to maintain a climate favourable to a resumption and continuation of talks" and to provice "efficient political and technical assistance."