The government of Sudan and two rebel groups fighting in the western Darfur region have agreed to peace talks in Abuja, Nigeria on Aug. 23, the African Union (AU) said yesterday.
AU spokesman Adam Thiam said the group's chairman, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, would mediate discussions between the Sudanese government, the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudan Liberation Army in the Nigerian capital.
Both rebel groups have been fighting government troops in Sudan's remote western region for the past 19 months.
Fighting in Darfur and raids by marauding Arab militias known as Janjaweed have uprooted more than one million African villagers and precipitated a humanitarian crisis the UN has called the worst in the world.
"The rebels and the government of Sudan have agreed to attend the talks," Thiam said from Addis Ababa, where the AU's headquarters are located.
"The talks will be a continuation of the political dialogue started in Addis Ababa on July 15 under the auspices of the African Union."
Those talks failed when the rebels set six conditions for negotiations and Khartoum immediately rejected them. The chief demands included Sudan's demilitarization of Darfur and access to an inquiry into genocide charges.
Obasanjo and AU Commission Chairman Alpha Konare, former president of Mali, worked with Sudan and the rebels to set up the talks, Thiam said.
The 53-member AU is proposing to send up to 2,000 troops to protect its ceasefire monitors in Darfur and to serve as peacekeepers, but has yet to send a formal request to Khartoum.
On Saturday, Sudan said it would permit African troops to protect their monitors, but said only its troops would handle the peacekeeping functions.
Sudan has about three weeks left to show the UN Security Council it is serious about disarming the Janjaweed or face possible sanctions.
Sudan's foreign minister, Mustafa Osman Ismail, also said on Saturday he had signed a Sudanese-UN pact pledging safe areas for the displaced villagers. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan sent the signed pact to the UN Security Council on Friday.
In addition to pledging the safe areas, Sudan also promised in the pact to work to disarm the Janjaweed and to stop actions by its own troops in civilian areas.
The Arab League, meanwhile, was due to hold an emergency meeting yesterday to discuss the Darfur situation with Khartoum.
AU Commission Chairma Alpha Oumar Konare yesterday left for Cairo to discuss a planned deployment of peacekeepers in the Darfur region, officials said.
Konare will meet Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa on the sidelines of an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers, convened to review developments in the region in light of a July 30 UN resolution on Darfur
The resolution calls on the Khartoum government to bring the situation in the region under control within 30 days or face international action.
Konare will brief Mussa "on the AU position and the preparations currently underway to deploy the African peacekeeping force and will discuss how the Arab League can support AU efforts," AU spokesman Adam Thiam said in Addis Ababa.
On Aug. 4, the AU said it was planning to transform what was supposed to be a small 300-man unit to protect AU observers overseeing a shaky ceasefire in Darfur into a 2,000-strong peacekeeping force, which will have a broader mandate of ensuring that there is security.
Also yesterday, a team tasked by UN chief Kofi Annan to help the pan-African body set up a peacekeeping force for the Sudan's resource-rich province, left Addis Ababa for Sudan for a tour that will take them to Darfur, UN officials said.
The team, including military experts, is scheduled to be in Darfur on Monday to assess the ground situation and then advise the AU before it deploys the force there.
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