Sudan president "threatens war," say former rebels
Source: Reuters
(Adds Jamous, al-Nur details, Monday talks, paragraphs 8-9,11) By Andrew Heavens KHARTOUM, Nov 18 (Reuters) - Former southern rebels accused Sudan's president on Sunday of "threatening and calling for war" in a speech he gave in honour of a government-allied militia charged with a string of atrocities. Pagan Amum, Secretary-General of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), said he deplored the comments by President Omar Hassan al-Bashir at celebrations organised by the Popular Defence Forces (PDF) militia on Saturday. In his belligerent televised speech, Bashir raised the political temperature and stoked the mutual suspicion between Khartoum and the SPLM. He called on the PDF "to open training camps and to gather mujahideen not for the sake of war but to be ready for anything," without giving details of their purpose. The militia, which fought the SPLM during a two-decade civil war, was accused of the mass abduction and rape of women and girls in Darfur, western Sudan, in a report published by the United Nations' human rights office in August. In a statement handed to Reuters on Sunday, Amum said the SPLM was "for peace and not for a return to war, and deplored therefore the public statements threatening and calling for war by the NCP (Bashir's National Congress Party) leadership." Two influential Darfur rebels -- Abdel Wahed Mohamed Ahmed al-Nur, the founder of Darfur's Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and Suleiman Jamous of the powerful SLA-Unity faction -- also condemned Bashir's remarks. Jamous told Reuters that Bashir's comments amounted to a "declaration of war." "We want to create a conducive atmosphere for negotiations. But Bashir is doing exactly the opposite when he calls for these new militia camps," said al-Nur, who has refused to take part in peace talks with Khartoum. "I am calling on the young people of Sudan not to go to these camps, unless they want to kill their fellow Sudanese or be killed," al-Nur added. The state-controlled Suna news agency reported on Sunday that Bashir would meet SPLM leader Salva Kiir on Monday to try to find a way out of the crisis. In his speech on Saturday, Bashir also said he would not budge "an inch" on the contested borders of the oil-rich Abyei region, a key point of contention with the SPLM which is based in the now semi-autonomous south under a peace accord. Bashir also accused the West of trying to "restart the slave trade" by allowing aid groups to smuggle children out of Africa -- a reference to the recent arrest of French aid workers accused of abducting children in Chad. He also reiterated his right to exclude Western troops from a 26,000-strong U.N./African Union peacekeeping force due to start operating in Darfur next year. Bashir's comments came at a turbulent time for the conflict in remote Darfur -- and for ties between Khartoum and the south. Peace talks between Khartoum and Darfuri rebels, brokered by the African Union and the U.N., have fizzled out after most insurgent groups boycotted the proceedings. The SPLM pulled its ministers out of the coalition government last month, accusing Khartoum of stalling on the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended Africa's longest civil war. (Writing by Andrew Heavens in Khartoum; editing by Tim Pearce)
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