Deadline Passes with No Peace Deal in Darfur

The pressure was on yesterday to convince two Darfur rebel factions to sign the latest peace deal to end Sudan’s three-year conflict in Darfur. A deal was signed on May 5 but only by one rebel faction leader, Minni Arcua Minnawi.  Minnawi is the leader of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA). African Union mediators gave two other factions until midnight May 31 to sign or face possible UN sanctions.

Minnawi said that the other leaders needed to sign up to address their concerns from within rather than be outside in the cold. "Let them hurry to sign," he said. "If they join the agreement they can develop things but whenever they are outside they cannot develop the document." But he added that no changes could be made to the current deal.

Abdel Wahed Mohammed al-Nur, the other SLA faction leader, is in the Kenyan capital Nairobi but on May 30 his group said he would not sign unless changes or additions were made to the text, conditions which the AU and Sudan's government reject.
And the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) said the deal was not acceptable to JEM and the people of Darfur. "We are calling on the United Nations and the AU (African Union) not to close doors and windows for peace in Darfur and also not to consider this document as something that cannot be changed," Ibrahim Mohamad Khalil, head of JEM, told a news conference in Ljubljana.

Currently Khalil is in the Slovenian capital negotiating peace with Darfur peace negotiator, Slovenian President Janez Drnovsek. Khalil said that the deal was not comprehensive and had no guarantees or a time frame for implementation. "We will continue negotiating," said Khalil. "We are calling on the United Nations and international mediators to be patient, not to hurry up, not to force an unacceptable peace on people of Darfur."

The SLA and JEM have said they want more political posts, better compensation for the victims of the conflict and a say in disarming the government-armed Arab militia, the Janjaweed, who are blamed for much of the violence on the ground.