AU peace deal almost impossible

A Sunday deadline for negotiators to sign off on a peace deal to end the three year war in the Darfur region of Sudan is unlikely to be met because a tabled deal includes too many compromises, a spokesman for one of the rebel groups said on Friday. Negotiators in the Nigerian capital Abuja have been considering an 85-page final peace agreement which was tabled by the African Union (AU) on Wednesday, ahead of a 30 April deadline for the two-year long talks to be wrapped up. Abdulwaheed Al-Nur, leader of the Sudanese Liberation Movement, said after a meeting with Nigerian president and AU mediator Olusegun Obasanjo on Friday that the key demands of his rebel group are not contained in the deal tabled by the AU, and that it is �almost impossible� that his group will sign it. �Our belief is that the document is good but our key areas are not there� we need the document of the AU to be as close as possible to our negotiating position,� he said. Al-Nur said the failure to allocate the Vice President slot to a Darfurian is one of the biggest sticking points for his group. The deal proposed by the AU includes an extensive section on power sharing, but the highest position allocated to a Darfurian is �senior presidential adviser�, the fourth highest position in government. Other deal breakers for the rebel movement are compensation, security arrangements in Darfur, and disarmament of the militia groups in the region. A representative of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), the other rebel movement participating in the Abuja talks, said his group had not yet had a chance to study the AU peace proposal. Sudanese Vice President Ali Ousman Taha said his team was still expecting to reach a settlement by the Sunday deadline. �On our side we have reiterated the commitment of the Sudanese government to have a positive conclusion to the negotiation going on here in Abuja on the fixed date of 30 April, 2006. The AU proposal is the framework for the upcoming settlement and we are working on it on our side as government and we hope that the parties will agree to conclude the settlement on this basis,� Taha said. The rebel groups allege the Sudanese government in Khartoum is sponsoring Janjawid militia attacks in Darfur, a southern region of Sudan, a semi-arid country in north-central Africa. The Sudanese government denies the charges. Regional analysts warned this week that a recent spate of attacks in south Darfur could constitute a new military offensive by the Sudanese government and that tens of thousands of people are at risk. Violence in the Darfur region has spread into neighbouring eastern Chad since December last year. Militia attacks have also scattered more than 200,000 refugees outside Sudan, and displaced at least 2 million people inside the country, making it the world�s most serious humanitarian disaster, according to the UN.