Government, rebels to meet in December

Separatist rebels and the Senegalese government are due to hold talks in The Gambia early in December, a source in the Gambian Department of State for Foreign Affairs told IRIN on Tuesday. “These will be substantive negotiations on all the contentious issues,” the official said. The Mouvement des forces democratic de Casamance (MFDC), led by Abbe Augustin Diamacoune, have been fighting for 17 years now for a separate state in the agriculturally rich Casamance. The MFDC claims that France forcibly united the area with the rest of Senegal at independence. The Gambia, located between the Casamance and the northern part of Senegal, has undertaken to broker peace. It started this process in June-July by hosting a meeting of MFDC factions aimed at presenting a common position for negotiations with the government in Dakar. Diamacoune, who is the political head of the separatist movement, discussed issues related to peace negotiations at the weekend with Sengalese Interior Minister Lamine Cisse and the head of Guinea-Bissau’s Military Junta, Brigadier General Ansumane Mane, AFP reported. In January, Senegalese President Abdou Diouf had met with Diamacoune to discuss the holding of peace talks.