‘No progress in peace talks’: SPLM-N El Hilu

The meeting between the Sudanese government and the faction of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North led by Abdelaziz El Hilu (SPLM-N) over the resumption of peace negotiations concluded without significant progress on Thursday.

The rebel faction and the Sudanese government were invited to several days of consultations in October under the chairmanship of the African Union High-level Implementation Panel (AUHIP) Addis Ababa and Johannesburg.

During these meetings, the AUHIP and the government proposed to agree on three documents: the draft framework agreement for 2014, the draft agreement on the cessation of hostilities for humanitarian purposes, and the rRoadmap agreement of 2016.

Amar Amun Deldum, the secretary-general of the movement, said in a statement on Thursday that the government “insisted on starting negotiations where it stood the last time. It held the three documents as the basis for negotiations.”

The statement added that the gap between the two sides remained large because each party stuck to its principled positions.

The government delegation “refrained from discussing national issues, which are to be discussed in the National Dialogue”. Deldum: “The SPLM is not interested in the output of the National Dialogue because it has not participated in it.”

Instead, the rebel group proposed to discuss the political file first, to be followed by the humanitarian issue and discuss the security arrangements and the ceasefire agreement once the two first files are settled, the statement read.

The AU mechanism proposed that the two sides continue bilateral consultative meetings until a minimum agreement on the agenda would be reached, thus, the consultative meetings were canceled without any significant progress.

The Sudanese government for its sides did not yet issue a statement on the meetings.