Darfur rebels ready to sign ceasefire agreement

The Darfur rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A), said on Tuesday it was ready to sign a ceasefire agreement with the government of Sudan, which is being brokered by Chad. "Our delegation arrived in Chad today [Tueday] and is ready to sign the agreement," the secretary general of the SLM/A, Minni Arkou Minnawi, told IRIN. He said Abdullah al Bakr, the SLA army chief of staff held talks with the president of Chad, Idriss Deby, in the town of Abeche, about 300 km from the Sudanese border. The government delegation had not yet arrived in Abeche by Tuesday afternoon, Minnawi said, but was expected shortly. The agreement would include a 45-day cessation of hostilities which would allow talks to take place between the government of Sudan and the SLM/A, to be mediated by the Chadian authorities, said Minnawi. Humanitarian access would also be guaranteed to the region, and neither side would be allowed to resupply arms, he added. The rights group, Amnesty International, appealed last week to all sides responsible to end the fighting in Darfur, which is currently Sudan's main battleground. Hundreds of civilians, mainly from the Fur, Zaghawa, Masalit and Tungur have been killed or injured, in what appear to be targeted attacks, and tens of thousands displaced in the last few months, it said. The SLA was formed early this year. In a political declaration released in March, Minnawi said it had taken up arms because the Khartoum government had "introduced policies of marginalisation, racial discrimination, and exploitation, that had disrupted the peaceful coexistence between the region's African and Arab communities". He added that the SLA's objective was to "create a united democratic Sudan" on the basis of equality and devolution of power.