Danforth leaves without deal on government bombings

The United States' special peace envoy to Sudan, John Danforth, said on Wednesday that he had failed to persuade the Sudanese government to agree to stop bombing civilian targets in southern Sudan. "I am sorry to say that we have no real progress there, as the government has not been supportive of a monitoring concept yet, although they agreed to a period of four weeks to halt unilateral military attacks," AFP quoted Danforth as saying at a press conference in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. Danforth said that providing for civilian safety and allowing relief supplies to reach vulnerable people were central to the proposals he had made in November, the German Press Agency (dpa) reported on Wednesday. "[Ending] the direct, intentional and egregious [flagrant] attacks on civilians is the key to our proposals," it quoted him as saying. "I am sorry to say we have made no real progress on these issues," Danforth added. "Civilian immunity from attacks depends on monitoring. The government has not been supportive of the monitoring aspect, although it reiterates its support for the Geneva Convention," Reuters on Wednesday quoted Danforth as saying. Khartoum has resisted calls for international monitoring. The Sudanese presidential peace adviser, Ghazi Salah al-Din al-Atabani, had described the proposal as "embarrassing", and publicly rejected the idea at a press conference on Monday, UPI reported. President Umar Hasan al-Bashir had on Monday offered a temporary, four-week halt to aerial bombardments in the south. He had told Danforth that Khartoum was willing to declare "a voluntary, unilateral cessation of aerial bombing for four weeks as a test", UPI quoted Atabani as saying. However, US officials in Danforth's delegation said Bashir had added the caveat of an unconditional cease-fire by the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), it added. An SPLM/A cease-fire in return for a government cessation of aerial bombing is an unlikely scenario, inasmuch as the rebel movement is firmly opposed to a creeping cease-fire agreement outside the context of a comprehensive political settlement to end the Sudanese civil war, according to regional observers. The SPLM/A leader, John Garang, dismissed Bashir's offer to suspend the bombings. "In the first place, nobody should bomb civilian targets; it's an insult to human rights," UPI quoted him as saying. "For a member of the United Nations and Organisation of African Unity to present this as a concession from the bottom of their hearts is laughable," Garang added. Danforth said that, during a meeting with the SPLM/A leadership, he had been able to get an assurance that the rebel group would not shell civilian targets, dpa reported on Wednesday. The government had argued that it had the right to attack any target it suspected of hosting rebel military activity, and that the SPLM/A sometimes misused civilian establishments, such as schools, to disguise its activities, the report stated. Bringing "an end to bombing and other military attacks on civilians" had been one of four confidence-building proposals put to the government and SPLM/A by Danforth in November. Danforth said some progress had been made on the other three: on humanitarian access to the Nuba Mountains; zones of tranquillity and times of tranquillity in which humanitarian assistance can be offered; and an end to the taking of slaves. The government and SPLM/A had agreed on a proposal for negotiating a truce in the Nuba Mountains of south-central Sudan, on establishing "zones of tranquillity" for immunisation purposes, and on proposals against "slavery and abductions", AFP quoted him as saying. A six-month cease-fire in the Nuba Mountains was now being negotiated in Switzerland, while zones of tranquillity had been agreed on - at least in principle - for immunisation, Danforth said. He said the Sudanese government would have until the "early spring" to commit itself to halting bombardments and allowing an independent monitoring mechanism to be established in the south, before he reported back to US President George W. Bush on whether or not the US should remain engaged in its initiative, AP reported. Danforth was scheduled to meet Egyptian President Husni Mubarak in Cairo on Thursday to discuss a proposed merger of the two parallel peace efforts on Sudan: one under the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the other a joint Libyan-Egyptian initiative - under the chairmanship of Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi.