Senior NCP official says Darfur peace to be signed by mid December

The official adviser to the President of the Republic, Dr. Ghazi Salah Al Din, announced a final Darfur Peace Agreement will be signed in the middle of next month in Doha. He was speaking at a news conference in Khartoum after returning from the Emirate of Qatar, which hosts the peace talks.

Ghazi is a top official in the ruling National Congress Party (NCP). After a consultation with the mediation team, Ghazi returned from Doha yesterday. He said that the joint mediation in Doha has agreed to conduct ‘intensive consultations’ on the document before the signing ceremony. The Liberation and Justice Movement had earlier revealed that the mediators intend to undertake a foreign tour to rally support for the forthcoming peace deal.

Meanwhile, the two rebel movements the Justice and Equality Movement and Sudan Liberation Movement faction of Abdel Wahid Al Nur rejected the developments at Doha and affirmed that they are not interested. Neither movement is party to those negotiations, although they have sent representatives to the talks. The new spokesman of the Sudan Liberation Movement, Ahmed Ibrahim Yusif, told Radio Dabanga that the movement’s position is that it cannot join the talks until security is established in Darfur, the Janjaweed are disarmed and the displaced persons can return to their villages of origin, which would require the expulsion of the new settlers living there. Ghazi Salah Al Din, who is in charge of the ‘Darfur file’ for the federal government, accused the Justice and Equality Movement of choosing military action in Darfur instead of peace. On the other hand, the Justice and Equality Movement said that it was the government that had chosen to continue military action and aerial bombardment in Darfur, causing displacement of civilians. This exchange of accusations follows a battle this week between the rebels and a government supply convoy near Nyala. Dozens of the Central Reserve soldiers were killed or wounded, according to witness accounts from Nyala where the casualties were taken.

For his part, Nur Al Din Barakat, head of the Democratic Unionist Party in West Darfur, warned against signing a peace deal in Doha without Abdel Wahid and Khalil Ibrahim and the other movements. He said that such an event would not bring security and peace for the region and would instead complicate the problem. He compared it to Abuja, when one faction signed a peace deal in 2006.