Casamance talks to be restarted

The Senegalese government on Thursday named a team to restart peace talks with the Mouvement des Forces Democratiques de Casamance (MFDC), which has been fighting for the independence of the southern Casamance region of Senegal since 1982. The team, which includes senior government officials, was named following a letter from the MFDC to Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade requesting the renewal of talks in an effort to end the low-level Casamance conflict of 20 years duration. MFDC spokesman Alexandre Djiba told IRIN on Wednesday that the group was ready for talks but had yet to meet the government delegation to agree on a venue and starting date. Other sources said the government team was expected to visit the main southern Senegalese town of Ziguinchor to discuss these details. Djiba denied media reports that the meeting would take place in neighbouring Guinea-Bissau. Casamance, which forms the southern part of Senegal, is bordered by The Gambia to the north and Guinea-Bissau to the south. Sud Quotidien, a Senegalese daily newspaper, reported on Wednesday that government officials in Guinea-Bissau had expressed concern that they had not been contacted about the impending meeting in their country. Meanwhile, a civil society meeting called to address the Casamance conflict was expected to end on Wednesday in Ziguinchor. The meeting, which began on Sunday 1 September, is understood to have been an open forum that sought opinions from "the sons and daughters" of Casamance on the conflict, and proposed recommendations on a future MFDC/government meeting. The MFDC told IRIN that, while news agencies called it a preparatory meeting for the talks with government, the Ziguinchor civil society meeting would have no bearing on the future of the negotiations. NGO sources said that numerous other meetings had been held in the area but had lacked cohesion among participants.