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Sudan govt, Darfur rebels talk in Nigeria
(AP)
Updated: 2005-10-05 09:24
Sudan's government and rebels from Darfur met Tuesday for a second day of
talks in Nigeria, with the visiting Dutch prime minister urging all parties to
reach a power-sharing deal by the end of the year, AP reported.
Although the sixth round of peace talks on Darfur was officially launched in
mid-September, government and rebel negotiators in Nigeria's capital had not
held any direct discussions until this week.
Instead, they attended seminars on peace negotiations and waited as Darfur's
main rebel group argued about the makeup of its delegation.
Addressing the parties at the start of talks Tuesday, Dutch Prime Minster Jan
Peter Balkenende urged all sides to make an effort to bring peace by the end of
the year.
Majzoub Al-Khalifa, Sudanese Agriculture
minister and head of a Sudanese government delegation, left, walks into
the venue of the Darfur peace talks in Abuja, Nigeria, Monday, Oct. 3
2005.[AP] | "The international community wants to see results, it cannot go on spending
resources on problems which should already have been resolved and still can be
resolved in the coming months," Balkenende said.
The Dutch prime minister's three-day visit, which started Monday, will also
include bilateral talks, government officials said.
After decades of low-level clashes over land and water that pitted nomads
against villagers, rebels from ethnic African tribes launched a large-scale
conflict in early 2003, accusing the Arab-dominated central government of
neglect.
The central government is accused of responding by unleashing Arab tribal
militias known as Janjaweed to murder and rape civilians and lay waste to
villages.
More than 180,000 people have died in Darfur and another two million people
have been displaced in the fighting.
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