Clock ticks on third Darfur peace deadline in a week

As Sudan’s warring Darfur factions near their third deadline this week for the signing of a peace deal, mediators overseeing the talks in the Nigerian capital are working to wrest more concessions from the Sudanese government. As a previous deadline slipped by on Tuesday, rebel negotiators suddenly donned their military fatigues in apparent readiness for a return to the desert battleground of western Sudan. But in a notable about-turn, negotiators were back in their civvies on Thursday, fuelling new optimism amid observers. A spokesman for the Sudan government, Abdual Rahman Zuma, told reporters late Wednesday that Khartoum might agree to budge on key rebel demands to have some of their fighters integrated into the national armed forces. “The Americans came up with an initiative about reintegration of the rebel combatants into the Sudanese army, and the government of Sudan has agreed to study the initiatives as soon as possible,” he said. He said that “no other point is being reviewed or is under consideration.” If there was a deal on bringing rebel fighters into the regular forces, observers said that in return the Sudanese government might win a concession regarding demands that it disband its militias before rebels give up their weapons. The government of Sudan accepted the original 85-page deal drafted by African Union mediators, but the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebels fighting Khartoum in Sudan’s Darfur region rejected the paper on a number of counts. Since the failure of this week’s Tuesday deadline, the talks have been led by US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, with AU chairman and Republic of Congo President Denis Sassou N’Guesso also adding his weight to the pressure for peace. Rebels from western Darfur, most of them black, mounted their anti-government campaign in 2003 accusing Arab-dominated Khartoum of sidelining and neglecting the desert region the size of France. In turn, Khartoum is alleged to have backed the Janjawid militia to crush the rebellion. Over the last three years, the UN estimates more than 200,000 people have died in village attacks and even more have been raped, injured or had their meagre possessions looted and homes burned to the ground. The fighting has at times spilled into eastern Chad, where around a quarter-million people, most of them Sudanese and some of them Chadians, are being assisted by UN agencies. The Darfur conflict has been described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and on Wednesday, Jan Egeland, the UN Under-Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, said he will travel to Khartoum on Saturday. In an interview with Reuters news agency, Egeland said a failure to secure a peace deal in Abuja could jeopardise humanitarian operations in Darfur. “If there is no agreement in Abuja, it could get much worse,” said Egeland, “and we are unarmed humanitarian workers, so we cannot sustain it if we are attacked.”