Darfur’s most heavily armed rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), said on Saturday that it had signed a framework agreement with the Sudanese government in Chad that provides for a ceasefire.
Soon afterwards, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir announced that he was quashing death sentences handed down by the courts against about 100 JEM fighters for their parts in an unprecedented rebel assault on the capital Khartoum in May 2008.
“We have just initially signed the framework agreement,” JEM spokesman Ahmed Hussein said by telephone from the Chadian capital, Ndjamena.
“We will discuss of [sic] many issues — return of the IDPs [internally displaced persons], power and wealth sharing, compensation, detainees,” he said, speaking in English.
“We are committed to a peaceful solution for Darfur,” he said.
JEM leader “Dr Khalil [Ibrahim] asks to our force to stop” military operations, he said.
A statement from the Chadian presidency said the agreement came after talks sponsored by Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno and led to “an immediate ceasefire and the start of negotiations for its application on the ground.”
It should lead to a “final agreement to be signed before March 15” ahead of presidential and legislative elections scheduled in Sudan in April, the statement said.
Bashir’s adviser on Darfur, meanwhile, said he expected negotiations with the JEM to be smooth and hoped other rebel groups will be drawn into talks with Khartoum.
“I don’t envisage major difficulties,” Ghazi Salaheddine said.
“This is not an exclusionnary arrangement, it does not exclude other movements specially those who come to the Doha process, we are open to them,” he said about talks expected to resume next week in the Qatari capital.
“I think we can try to emulate the agreement which we signed with JEM and speed up the process so that we can reach a final agreement as soon as possible,” he said.
Bashir had promised on Friday “good news” about Darfur, adding that an agreement with the JEM would end the devastating seven-year conflict in Darfur that has claimed some 300,000 lives and left 2.7 million refugees, UN figures show. Sudan puts the death toll at 10,000.
The movement’s attack on the capital in 2008 brought it to just across the Nile from the presidential palace in the first ever such offensive by a Sudanese rebel group.
The fighting resulted in at least 220 deaths and the capture of a large number of rebel fighters. A total of 105 were later convicted and condemned to death.
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