Sudan govt team to meet Darfur rebels in Paris

Monday June 21st, 2004.

KHARTOUM, June 21 (Reuters) - A government team will leave Sudan for Paris on Monday for talks with a rebel group on a conflict which has displaced one million people in west Sudan's Darfur region and raised fears of large-scale famine.

The United Nations says the conflict has created the world's worst humanitarian disaster, and a medical aid agency has predicted tens of thousands of deaths from hunger in Darfur unless aid operations are considerably increased.

Hassan Burgo, a senior official from the ruling National Congress party, said talks with the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) were expected to last about one week and would cover "points of difference".

The JEM and another rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), launched an uprising in Darfur in February 2003, saying they wanted a fairer share of power and resources in Sudan, a poor country which produces oil.

Both groups signed a truce with the government on April 8, but since then each side has accused the other of violations.

Rebels accuse the government of arming Arab militias, known locally as Janjaweed, to loot and burn African villages in the arid area, where tension between Arab nomads and African farmers has often flared in the past but not into fullscale conflict.

"There is communication between the government and the political leadership of the rebels via mediators to bring us together for these talks," Burgo told Reuters.

Burgo said the government would urge the return to Sudan of JEM's leaders, who are based in Europe.

Aid workers have been calling for more international support for the hundreds of thousands of people who have fled or been forced from their homes in Darfur and for around 158,000 refugees who have fled to neighbouring Chad.

"As presently designed, the relief operation falls dramatically short of the needs and will not succeed in preventing an entirely man-made famine from wiping out tens of thousands of lives across Sudan's Darfur region," the aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres said in a report received on Monday.

Burgo said he did not expect a lot from the Paris talks. "I don't want people to attach too much importance to what will happen in Paris. It is a continuation of negotiations but the important thing is the ceasefire which was agreed upon and we are committed to," he said.

Officials said the ruling party's secretary-general for Khartoum state, Al-Haj Atta al-Manan, was heading the government team and the talks were a continuation of discussions with the JEM first held in March.