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Government and former Darfur rebels work to heal rift

Posted on: Saturday, 5 August 2006, 14:45 CDT

By Opheera McDoom

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Former Darfur rebels said on Saturday they had stopped implementing a peace deal until the government honors a promise to make Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) leader Minni Arcua Minnawi a special presidential assistant.

Minnawi was supposed to arrive in Khartoum on Saturday to kick-start the post-deal reconstruction of Darfur but refused to show up. An SLA official told reporters waiting at the airport that the rebel leader would not come until he was appointed.

"The government is not serious about this peace and Minni will not come to Khartoum until this decree is issued from the presidency appointing him as assistant to the president," said al-Fadil al-Tijani, the SLA deputy head of political affairs.

"All technical committees have stopped work."

But state-owned television said later on Saturday the decree to appoint Minnawi had been issued. The SLA said Minnawi was likely to come on Sunday to Khartoum to restart the peace process now their demand had been met.

The SLA is the only of three rebel groups to have signed the peace deal, though Minnawi has said he does not trust the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) who signed the deal with him.

Thousands of policemen, soldiers and rooftop snipers had been stationed in the expectation that protests against the unpopular deal would greet Minnawi's arrival.

But only a few hundred people, including schoolchildren and university students from Darfur, had gathered in Khartoum's Green Square on Saturday to welcome Minnawi.

"They've been saying for weeks now that he's coming tomorrow, next week, and today all this -- and he's still not here?" said Noureddine Siddig Adam from North Darfur.

"I won't bother to come next time."

Minnawi has been dogged by allegations that his troops tortured opponents and intensified attacks against other rebel groups who did not sign the accord.

He denies the accusations but some attacks and torture have been confirmed by an African Union force monitoring a shaky truce in the region.

Many Darfuris reject the deal signed by Minnawi, saying they want more compensation for war victims, political posts and crucially a rebel role in monitoring the disarmament of Arab militias known as Janjaweed blamed for much of the rape and pillage in Darfur.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed and 2.5 million forced from their homes during more than three years of conflict in Darfur.

"This peace deal will be as much of a failure as today's celebration was," added Farid el-Nur Adam from West Darfur.

SLA spokesman Mahjoub Hussein told the crowd in Khartoum why Minnawi was not coming. The only cheer he got was from his declaration of complete support for the immediate deployment of U.N. troops to Darfur, which the NCP opposes.

The NCP dominates parliament and government and compares a U.N. takeover of a struggling African Union mission in Darfur to a Western attempt to colonize Sudan.

Almost all other political parties and tens of thousands of Darfuris have expressed their support for a U.N. force.

Critics say the NCP fears U.N. troops may be used to arrest officials likely to be indicted by the International Criminal Court investigating alleged war crimes in the region.

Source: REUTERS

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