FORCES backing the Khartoum government have violated a four-day-old ceasefire in Sudan's western Darfur region, killing 32 civilians, a Sudanese rebel group charged today. Colonel Abdallah Abdel Karim, military spokesman of the Justice and Equality Movement (MJE), said Janjawid militiamen and government troops had torched villages north-west of the Darfur state capital Geneina near the border with Chad yesterday.
| Did anybody expect anything different? |
Karim, who was speaking in the Gabonese capital Libreville by satellite telephone and said he was in Darfur, added that 32 people allegedly killed in the raids were "mostly women, elderly and children". Several official sources in the Chadian capital Ndjamena said they were unaware of the alleged raids, while observers said criminal attacks may have been carried out by unruly soldiers.
| Nothing official, you understand. I'm trying to figure how the colonel was speaking from Gabon and was still in Darfur, though... |
Karim said the MJE's president was "taking steps to inform the mediators" of the alleged ceasefire violation. But he repeated his rebel group's misgivings over the Chadian mediators in the conflict, charging that Chadian soldiers had tried to arrest members of an MJE delegation in Chad, seizing their valuables when they went to the town of Tine-Chad near the border with Sudan to meet with Sudanese refugees. "Regarding the mediation, we have always said that the Chadian government was not impartial. We reaffirm the same thing," Karim said. "If there is no change in attitude, the MJE will have to ask the international community to transfer the negotiations to a neutral country."
| That would probably be a good idea, if you can find one to take on the job. Try finding somebody without a dog in the fight, like Vietnam or Bhutan. |
New talks are set for next Tuesday in the Chadian capital Ndjamena to discuss political issues and seek a "definitive settlement" to the conflict. A Chadian mediator said he hoped a parallel meeting would be held to set up the ceasefire monitoring commission. |