West Sudan rebels reject government talks proposal

South African Broadcasting Corporation

February 21, 2004

Two rebel groups from the west of Sudan said today they would not attend a conference in the capital proposed by the Sudanese government that aims to end a year-old conflict in the arid and remote Darfur region.

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has proposed a conference in Khartoum for all Darfur leaders, including the rebels, to be chaired by Idriss Deby, the Chadian president, in the coming days. The government has offered rebels safe passage.

"We will not participate in this conference nor do we recognise it," Khalil Ibrahim, leader of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), told Reuters by telephone from Paris. "The only people who will be going are the government people and those who are afraid of the government and so this will be just government members talking to each other," he said.

JEM is one of two main rebel groups which took up arms against the government in February last year accusing Khartoum of marginalising the vast region next to Chad and of arming nomadic Arab militias to loot and burn African villages.