Peace talks teeter back from brink of collapse

Talks aimed at bringing peace to Darfur teetered back from the brink of collapse on Wednesday, as rebel leaders temporarily shelved their objection to discussing the confinement of all fighting forces to designated bases, an African Union (AU) spokesman said. "We have finally agreed on the agenda," spokesman Assane Ba told IRIN after three days of preliminary wranglings at the AU-sponsored talks in the Nigerian capital, Abuja. "The rebels had said they wanted the cantonment item taken off the agenda... After private consultations they said they still had reservations about that item but they would allow the process to go on," Ba added. Darfur's two rebel groups -- the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) -- have been fighting Khartoum for the past 18 months, demanding a better economic and political deal for the arid western region. They refuse to be disarmed by Sudanese government troops whom they say are in cahoots with the Janjawid, a paramilitary force of Arab nomads mounted on horses and camels, which has been accused of looting and burning the villages of black African farmers across Darfur. Although the cantonment issue is likely to raise its head again later this week, when the official agenda moves from humanitarian concerns to security matters, there is some hope of reaching a compromise. Khartoum has less than a week to prove to the UN that it has made progress in restoring security in its troubled western region and disarming the Janjawid. The threat of sanctions looms on the horizon if the Sudanese government should fail. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, the current AU chairman, stressed the high stakes at the Abuja talks. "One thing that will be a real disaster is for the international community to feel absolutely dissatisfied with the handling of events by the government of Sudan to the extent that they will have to unleash more than even what we are asking for," he told reporters on Tuesday. On Wednesday, just two days after snubbing the AU's offer to disarm the rebels, the Sudanese government appeared to leave the door open for extra AU troops to be flown into Darfur to supervise the cantonment of rebel forces, ahead of their eventual disarmament. "They (the AU) may need more forces, besides the protection of their monitors, to protect the cantonment of the rebels and we agree about that," said Agriculture Minister Majzoub al-Khalifa, the Sudanese government's top negotiator in Abuja. He did not specify how many extra AU troops might be needed. The AU already has 155 Rwandan troops in Darfur and 120 Nigerians are due to join them later this week, but the mandate of this small force is to protect the AU's ceasefire monitors and does not extend to the protection of civilians or peacekeeping duties. Obasanjo has proposed sending another 2,000 AU troops to keep the rebels at their bases while Khartoum disarms the pro-government Janjawid militia. However, the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based thinktank, and the US-based organisation Refugees International have both called for the AU to send a peacekeeping force of at least 3,000. The United Nations has labelled Darfur as the world's worst humanitarian crisis. Almost 1.5 million people driven from their homes and the UN predicts that two million people could need humanitarian aid by October. Between 30,000 and 50,000 people are thought to have died since the conflict began. AU spokesman Ba said the peace talks would resume in Abuja on Thursday morning.