AU to end Darfur peace talks
2006-04-24 10:01
Abuja - The African Union will end talks among warring parties in Sudan's Darfur region by April 30 if the Khartoum government and rebel factions fail to agree to a peace deal, says a senior mediator.
Sam Ibok, head of the AU team mediating peace negotiations between the Sudan government and rebels fighting in Darfur, said on Sunday that his team was still working toward a United Nations-backed deadline to achieve a final peace agreement by the end of the month.
Ibok said: "We will respect the deadline and if there are no indications that a deal is possible, we will wind up" talks by April 30.
According to Ibok, representatives of the Sudanese government and the two Darfur rebel movements would be presented with the final draft agreement this week.
Large-scale violence
The chief mediator said that the document would represent a "just and acceptable compromise" to end the Darfur conflict if indeed the warring sides were interested in peace.
Decades of low-level tribal clashes over land and water in Darfur erupted into large-scale violence in early 2003 after some ethnic groups took up arms, accusing the East African nation's Arab-dominated central government of neglect.
The central government was accused of responding by unleashing Arab tribal militias known as Janjaweed to murder and rape civilians. Sudan denied backing the Janjaweed.
More than 180 000 people had died in the conflict and more than three million had been driven from their homes.
Nearly two years of AU-mediated peace negotiations in Abuja between the Sudan government and the two main rebel groups - the Sudanese Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement - had failed to yield a deal to end a conflict the UN said had caused one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters.
The UN security council earlier in the month gave its backing to the deadline set by the AU for a Darfur peace deal.
The security council also said it would hold accountable those responsible for blocking the Darfur peace process and violating human rights there.
- AP