Sudan will withdraw from Darfur peace talks in Doha and organize its own negotiations if no accord with the rebels is reached imminently, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir said on Wednesday, prompting an angry response from one rebel group.
“If we reach an agreement tomorrow, praise be to God. But if there is no agreement, we will withdraw our negotiating team and the talks will then be held in Darfur,” al-Bashir told thousands of supporters in Nyala.
“We will fight those who choose to take up arms, but we will sit next to those who want development,” he added in a speech broadcast live on state television from the South Darfur capital.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Sudanese officials had earlier set today as the deadline for a Darfur peace accord, with a referendum on independence for the south, now just 11 days away, due to dominate the Khartoum government’s agenda next month.
Al-Bashir’s special adviser on Darfur, Ghazi Salaheddine, was expected in the Qatari capital on Wednesday to push the talks, according to Sudan’s official SUNA news agency.
However, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), the most heavily armed Darfur rebel group, slammed al-Bashir’s speech, calling it “a declaration of war.”
“We condemn Bashir’s speech today and we consider it a declaration of a new war,” JEM spokesman Ahmed Hussein Adam said.
“It undermines the efforts of the international community and of the mediation to resolve his conflict through political means,” Adam told reporters by phone from Doha. “JEM is committed to reach a fair settlement of the conflict, which is why we are here in Doha ... If the Sudan government leaves Doha, we cannot have an agreement with ourselves.”
Earlier this month, JEM resumed talks with the government aimed at reaching a ceasefire, while the Liberty and Justice Movement, an alliance of rebel splinter factions, was expected to finalize a peace deal with Khartoum in the middle of this month after agreeing a ceasefire in March. However, the accord was never signed.
Deadly violence in Sudan’s war-torn western region since Dec. 10 has displaced about 32,000 people, according to UN estimates.
“These clashes are deplorable and demonstrate the importance of a ceasefire ... If the violence escalates, the general atmosphere in the negotiations will deteriorate,” Djibril Bassole, the UN-African Union chief peace negotiator for Darfur, told reporters on Tuesday.
Bassole said he would try to persuade the different parties not to abandon the peace process, even if an agreement was not reached in the coming days.
“I am among those who want a swift and satisfactory solution, but mediation by someone with a stopwatch in his hand is not good mediation,” he added.
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