ABUJA, Aug 24: Sudanese government envoys and the leaders of two rebel groups from the war-torn Darfur region agreed on Tuesday to an agenda for African Union-sponsored peace talks aimed at resolving the 18-month-old war in the far west of Sudan.
AU chairman President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and several senior African and UN officials welcomed the warring parties to the headquarters of the west African bloc ECOWAS for the second day of the talks.
At the end of the morning session, Obasanjo announced to journalists: "I think we have made some progress. We've made the first step in the right direction in these very important talks."
The talks restarted later in the day with negotiations on the first item on the agenda: the provision of humanitarian aid to Darfur, where the UN reports that 1.2 million people have been displaced by fighting between rebels and the Sudanese army and an allied Arab militia.
AU leaders hope that if agreement on a political and security strategy can be reached it will reinforce efforts to enforce a ceasefire in the western Sudanese region, where more than 30,000 people have died in the past 18 months.
The rebel groups, however, insist that they want the African Union to pressure Khartoum into granting Darfur and other regions greater autonomy and a better share of the national income. They are also refusing to disarm.
"How can we disarm our people? Without a proper security arrangement, these forces are our guarantee," declared Abdel-Wahid Mohamed Ahmed el-Nur, leader of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), as he arrived at the talks on Tuesday. -AFP
