Sudan: Official Suggests Darfur Peace Talks Be Held in South Africa
Text of report by South African newspaper The Star on 24 July
[Report by Peter Fabricius: "Adviser Wants SA To Host Sudanese Peace Talks"]
An adviser to Sudanese President Omar el Bashir has recommended that peace negotiations which are expected to start next month between the government and rebels still fighting it in the troubled province of Darfur should take place in South Africa.
Dr Sayed el-Khatib, director-general of the Centre for Strategic Studies in Khartoum, said the SA government had been informally asked to host the talks and would soon be approached formally.
Sudan thought that South Africa would be the most neutral venue.
He was speaking yesterday at the Centre for International Political Studies at the University of Pretoria. El-Khatib generally reflects Khartoum’s line.
A first round of peace talks between Khartoum and Darfur rebels took place in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria and ended last year with the government and just one rebel group -the Minni Minawi faction of the Sudanese Liberation Movement -signing the Darfur peace agreement.
Several other rebel groups are continuing their fight against the government. Meanwhile, thousands of civilians are dying in Darfur.
Khartoum recently agreed to re-open the negotiations to try to get agreement from the outstanding rebel groups.
It also agreed, after protracted negotiations, to allow a joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force into Darfur to protect civilians and stabilise the region while the political negotiations unfolded.
El-Khatib clarified the Sudanese government’s position on the composition and other aspects of the controversial “hybrid” force of UN and AU members which Khartoum, the UN and AU have now agreed to deploy in Darfur.
Khartoum had been insisting since last year that the force must comprise mainly African troops but recently took a more flexible approach.
El-Khatib was asked if Sudan would agree to a hybrid force with no more than 30 per cent Africans as African troops were already overstretched in peace missions.
He said that would not be a problem. Khartoum had agreed with the UN and AU that the personnel for the hybrid force would first be sought in Africa and if Africa could not provide them, they could be sought elsewhere.
Diplomatic sources said they believed that the UN Security Council would formalise the deployment of the hybrid force this week and that it would be deployed between October and the end of the year.
El-Khatib said the main obstacle to restarting the political negotiations was that there were between 14 and 18 movements all claiming to represent the people of Darfur. The UN and AU were now trying to persuade them to consolidate and to ensure that the many rebel commanders in the field in Darfur would respect any agreements reached by the politicians in the negotiations.
The failure to do so had been a problem with the previous negotiations in Abuja.
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