Rebels reject Darfur deal, Sudan breaks apart

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KHARTOUM (Reuters) - The African Union has defended a Darfur peace deal signed by the Sudanese government and one of three rebel groups in May against critics who had said the agreement contains "serious flaws".

The International Crisis Group (ICG) has criticised the May 5 deal and said in a report released last week that the African Union-mediated agreement needed a robust U.N. peacekeeping force to avoid collapse in the remote region.

"The International Crisis Group 'Policy Briefing' on Darfur contains some serious errors of fact and interpretation, which are extremely unhelpful to the process of implementation," the AU said in a seven-page reply, seen by Reuters on Monday.

Since the deal, the AU has come under attack in the camps which house 2.5 million displaced Darfuris, and their patrols have been obstructed by hostile armed factions who did not sign the deal or were not present at negotiations.

Key deadlines, including receiving the government's crucial plan to disarm proxy militias by June 22, have been missed with no repercussions.

The AU rejected the ICG analysis that the deal contains no guarantees for implementation.

"There are in fact no fewer than three levels of guarantees either built into the (deal) or surrounding it," it said, adding that U.S., European, senior U.N. officials and African presidents who signed the deal as witnesses were guarantees.

ICG said it stood by its analysis.

"The security situation continues to be extremely worrisome," said Dave Mozersky, ICG's Sudan researcher.

"Implementation of the (deal) is likely to be challenged by a combination of government unwillingness, rebel divisions and unwillingness of the international community to stand up for a sufficiently robust peacekeeping force," he added.

Tens of thousands have been killed in three years of rape, murder and pillage in Sudan's remote west, violence Washington calls genocide.

While Khartoum denies the charge, the International Criminal Court is investigating alleged war crimes in the region, the first case referred by the U.N. Security Council to the tribunal which is a separate body from the United Nations.

An ill-equipped 7,000-strong AU force is monitoring a widely ignored truce in Darfur.

The AU, fast running out of cash, has asked the U.N. to take over, but Khartoum has rejected the move. Sudan paints a picture of a Western invasion that would attract Islamic militants and create an Iraq-like quagmire in Darfur.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he would meet President Omar Hassan al-Bashir at an AU summit in Gambia this week to discuss Khartoum's rejection of the U.N. force, which he described as "incomprehensible".

AU defends embattled Darfur peace deal

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Sudan lifts ban on UN Darfur mission

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The Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) has sharply criticised the National Congress Party, its partner in the national unity government, for rejecting UN peacekeepers in the country.

Yasser Arman, SPLM spokesman, said his movement had not been consulted over the government stance rejecting the deployment of UN troops in Darfur region.

He pointed out that the SPLM have no objections to the deployment of UN troops in Darfur.

On Friday, Omar al-Bechir, the Sudanese president, reiterated his opposition to an international peacekeeping force in Darfur.

In an interview with a French magazine, the Sudanese leader was quoted as saying he was "suspicious of the desire of the United States to internationalise the Darfur conflict".

Highlighting this resistance to foreign troops, the Sudan government ordered Chadian military personnel working with AU truce monitors in its western Darfur region to leave on Saturday.

Chadian-Sudanese relations have deteriorated in recent months with both sides accusing the other of supporting guerrillas working in Sudan's remote west, which has a long, porous border with Chad.

In Gambia, a summit of more than 50 African heads of states opened on Saturday, with the aim of pursuing regional integration, but conflicts in Darfur and Somalia will be topping the agenda.

The leaders are expected to focus much attention and time to seek solutions to the conflicts in Sudan's western Darfur region from where the African Union is adamant it will pull out its poorly-equipped 7,000 strong force by September 30 to pave way for UN peacekeepers.

Sudan squabbles over UN troops

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A new alliance of Darfur rebel commanders and political parties have attacked a town on the road to the capital, declaring a 27-month-old truce dead, rebels and officials said on Monday.

One of three rebel factions had signed an African Union-mediated peace deal in May, but since then new alliances have been formed among those who reject the deal.

"The forces of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) attacked a town in North Kordofan called Hamrat al-Sheikh," said a spokesman for the Sudan armed forces. "Sudanese planes have been deployed and the aggression is continuing."

Hamrat al-Sheikh is on the road between the capital, Khartoum, and North Kordofan's main town el-Obeid.

The JEM has little military power on the ground in Darfur, where the other main rebel group, the fractious Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), controls most of the rebel territories.

The JEM formed an alliance last week called the National Redemption Front (NRF) with a few breakaway SLA commanders and a small political party, the Sudan Federal Democratic Alliance.

Adam Ali Shogar, one of the SLA commanders in the NRF, told Reuters that his forces were still in control of Hamrat al-Sheikh.

"God willing, we will be on our way to Khartoum," he said. "The government has shown it is not committed to the 2004 humanitarian ceasefire so this deal now has no meaning."

"The government has shown it is not committed to the 2004 humanitarian ceasefire so this deal now has no meaning"

It was the first time a rebel group in Darfur openly stated it was disregarding the April 2004 truce, which had in any case been ignored by all groups.

During the more than three years of revolt in Darfur, rebels often attacked in Kordofan, which neighbours Darfur, saying they were close to the capital. They never reached Khartoum.

Monday's attack will be a blow to the May 5 peace deal, already facing criticism from Darfuri citizens and Jan Pronk, the top UN envoy in Sudan.

Since the deal, the rebels have split many times and formed many alliances. Commanders have changed sides on numerous occasions.

Many Darfuris reject the deal, saying they want more compensation for war victims, more political posts and more transparency in disarming proxy government militias, blamed for much of the rape, pillage and murder that has driven 2.5 million into wretched camps and killed tens of thousands.

Darfur rebels end truce with attack

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Sudan has summoned the Eritrean ambassador to clarify why Eritrea is hosting a Darfur rebel alliance that attacked a town this week.

The National Redemption Front (NRF) is an alliance of Darfur rebels and political parties that reject the peace deal struck in May. It was formed in the Eritrean capital, Asmara, last week and attacked Hamrat al-Shaikh, 200km from Khartoum, on Monday.

Lam Akol, the Sudanese foreign minister, said: "If they form a movement in Asmara and come and fight against Sudan and we have asked Asmara to mediate in problems in the east, then that does not augur well for peace."

Eritrean-Sudanese relations had improved in recent months, and Asmara sent an ambassador to Khartoum last month. Asmara is mediating in talks intended to end a simmering 10-year-old conflict in eastern Sudan.

Most of the opposition groups have either signed agreements with Khartoum or are in peace negotiations.

But Eritrea's hosting of the new rebel alliance has raised a question over its ability to mediate neutrally, Akol said.

"This is why we are seeking clarification so we can get an answer to that question - we told them we need an immediate answer," he said.

The Eritrean embassy in Khartoum declined to comment.

Monday's attack in North Kurdufan, which neighbours Darfur, prompted a hasty response from Sudan's armed forces, which sent bombers to repulse the offensive.

The NRF said a two-year-old humanitarian ceasefire was dead, the first time a rebel group has openly denounced the truce, although it had in any case been largely ignored by all parties.

Majzoub al-Khalifa, the Sudanese presidential adviser, also accused Chad of supporting the NRF, in comments carried in state-owned press.

Chad has played host to many of the rebel commanders involved in Monday's attack. Sudan has also been home to Chadian insurgents bent on overthrowing the president, Idriss Deby.

Sudan questions Eritrea over rebels

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At least six people have been killed and 11 wounded after assailants ambushed a German aid agency vehicle in southern Sudan, witnesses say.

Five Sudanese teenagers riding in the back of a pick-up belonging to the German Agency for Technical Co-operation (GTZ) and one attacker were shot dead in the attack, they said on Wednesday.

The ambush occurred on Monday, about 20km west of Juba, the provisional capital of southern Sudan.

In addition to the casualties, a Kenyan surveyor working for GTZ was reported missing.

About 30 assailants, thought to be members of Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) stormed the truck carrying non-German GTZ employees and security guards and about 20 passengers, the witnesses said.

"They were shooting bullets all around us," said Paul Agos, a Sudanese security guard for GTZ who was in the vehicle. "I fell off the truck and shot one of them. Then they all fled into the bush."

Witnesses said the attackers, some of whom were uniformed, were rebel fighters with the LRA, which has waged a nearly 20-year war in northern Uganda and southern Sudan but is preparing for peace talks with Kampala.

Witnesses said that the assailants spoke the Acholi dialect of northern Uganda and that the attack took place in an area known to be frequented by the rebels, but the identities of the attackers could not be independently confirmed.

A spokesman for the LRA delegation in Juba awaiting the start of Wednesday's peace talks with the Ugandan government denied the rebels were involved in any such attack.

"I can categorically deny that the LRA is responsible for the attack," spokesman Obonyo Olweny said.

Herbert Kremeier, GTZ's Kenya-based programme director for southern Sudan, said the attack underscored the agency's concern for its employees' safety in the region where it is building a road from Juba to the town of Bor.

"GTZ is concerned about security," he said. "It has been an issue."

Kremeier said a search, backed by UN helicopters, was under way for the missing Kenyan surveyor, Daniel Wekesa.

Six killed in Sudan aid agency ambush

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Little has changed in the two months since the Sudanese government signed a much-celebrated peace agreement with the biggest Darfur rebel force to end a war that has claimed an estimated 200,000 lives:

KASSAB, SUDAN - Don't ask Ibrahim Rahma about the peace agreement for Darfur. Where he sits, in this camp where thousands displaced by the war in western Sudan now live in tumbledown wooden shacks, there is no peace.
Here, the 38-year-old sheik said, stick-legged children still subsist on rationed food and armed men still terrorize people.

"You cannot just say there is peace. You have to see it," said Rahma, seated under a billowing gum tree with two dozen other weary-faced sheiks.

Across the vast, unforgiving desert of western Sudan, little has changed in the two months since the Sudanese government signed a much-celebrated peace agreement with the biggest Darfur rebel force to end a war that has claimed an estimated 200,000 lives.

The violence that forced 2.4 million people from their homes continues, though the worst fighting now appears to be among rival rebel groups that rose up against Sudan's Arab-led government in 2003 on behalf of Darfur's marginalized African tribes.

The rebels' original enemy, Arab militias known as the janjaweed, which Sudan unleashed to fight the uprising, also are still here, looting and occasionally killing villagers in a scorched-earth campaign that the Bush administration has labeled genocide.

The long, complex process of disarming the janjaweed, the linchpin for peace, has already missed its first deadlines.

Overseeing the agreement are 7,000 overwhelmed African Union troops, who don't have the authority to punish violations. The United Nations wants to send its own, stronger mission next year, but Sudan's president, who denies any wrongdoing in Darfur, said last month that would "never, ever happen."

Last week, the U.N. envoy to Sudan, Jan Pronk, suggested that the deal might be doomed.

"There is a significant risk that the Darfur Peace Agreement will collapse," Pronk wrote on his blog at www.janpronk.nl. "On the ground, especially amongst the displaced persons, it meets more and more resistance."

That the deal is already on life support is a major disappointment for international efforts to end what the United Nations has called the world's gravest humanitarian crisis.

In May, diplomatic heavyweights led by then-deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick pressed Sudan and the rebels toward agreement in a week of feverish negotiations in Abuja, Nigeria. But at the last minute, with Sudan and rebel leader Minni Minnawi ready to sign, a rival faction led by Abdol Wahid al Nur pulled out.

Analysts welcomed Minnawi's endorsement at the time because he had the biggest military force, but support among his field commanders is eroding. Increasingly isolated, Minnawi shuns interviews and spends less time in Darfur, people here say.

Since the agreement, Zoellick has left the State Department, leaving the U.S. without a point man in the peace process.

"The U.S. provided important leverage and diplomatic initiative to the process, got one rebel group to sign a deal that [the government] was ecstatic about and then bailed," said John Prendergast, a senior adviser to the International Crisis Group, a Belgium-based think tank that tracks international conflicts.

"The aftermath of that premature departure has been disastrous," he said, "as the other rebel groups have only grown in support and resources, at the expense of the faction that signed."

Up and down Darfur's sandy moonscape, village after village sits empty. In some, the charred, crumbling shells of mud huts are chilling reminders of janjaweed raids. Other villages, abandoned in fear, are eerily empty, seemingly frozen in an early morning stillness.

Potable water, proper schools and other services are urgent needs, residents said.

Analysts say the disarmament provisions are the agreement's weakest link because they rely on total cooperation from Sudan's government - which has maintained that the conflict is tribal and that the janjaweed aren't under its control - and on robust monitoring by the undermanned African Union.

"There will be no disarmament of the janjaweed under the existing plan, which is too weak to sustain such a difficult process," Prendergast said.

Within days of the signing, numerous new attacks were reported. On May 15, according to local accounts, 11 villagers were killed in janjaweed raids in the area around Kassab.

Sheiks here said anyone who ventures outside the camp risks being attacked. An African Union convoy must escort the women who go to collect firewood.

With the ongoing violence, basic humanitarian aid doesn't reach about a third of people who need it. Much of western Darfur is a no-go zone for aid workers, and throughout the region white SUVs emblazoned with aid agencies' logos are sporadically hijacked by janjaweed and rebels alike.

According to the agreement, Sudan was to present a complete disarmament plan by late June, and the African Union was to establish demilitarized zones for aid convoys to travel more freely. Those deadlines came and went.

Without progress on disarmament, the peace deal - and the African Union - seem to lose credibility in Darfur with each passing day. In a recent meeting, the sheiks of Kassab said they hadn't read the agreement and an African Union officer volunteered to bring them a copy printed in Arabic.

The sheiks waved their hands dismissively. Rahma, among the youngest in the group, spoke up.

"We need security," he said. "We don't need to see any papers."

Deal brings little peace to people of Darfur