Meeting in the Northern Tanzanian town of Arusha, eight Darfur rebel groups have agreed a common platform for peace negotiations with the Sudanese government that they said could start within three months.
A unified position for the fractious rebels was seen as another important step towards ending four and half years of conflict in the western region. The UN Security Council recently ordered the deployment of 26,000 peacekeepers there.
The eight rebel factions represented in the Arusha talks "presented a common platform on power-sharing, wealth-sharing, security arrangements, land and humanitarian issues, for the final negotiations", according to the final statement.
"They also recommended that final talks should be held between two to three months from now", the statement said, adding that the venue had yet to be determined.
The talks were however boycotted by two key rebel leaders, including the founding father of the Darfur rebellion, Abdelwahid Mohammad Nour.
The groups committed themselves to confidence-building measures to pave the way for final peace talks, including ensuring humanitarian access to Darfur, where the combined effect of war has left at least 200,000 dead since 2003, according to UN estimates.
The Sudanese government made no immediate comment on the rebel groups' agreement.
But the two principal mediators in the talks, UN envoy Jan Eliasson and his African Union counterpart, Salim Ahmed Salim, said they would travel to Khartoum for consultations with the government in coming days.
"We would want to see concrete commitment" from Khartoum to a cease-fire, Salim told reporters in Arusha.
In the final statement, the rebel groups "reiterated their readiness to respect a complete cessation of hostilities, provided that all other parties make similar commitments".
Yet neither the rebels nor the mediators were willing to reveal the details of the rebel position on power and wealth-sharing, which Sudan watchers say has been the cause of fallouts.
The conflict in Darfur erupted when rebel groups complaining of political and economic marginalization by the Khartoum government took up arms.
A peace deal was signed with the government in Abuja in May 2006 but only one rebel faction endorsed it, sparking deep divisions and a new surge in violence.
A spokesman for one rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement, stressed that positions had simply been harmonized but that no compromises to Khartoum had been agreed to.
© Monday Morning 2007
