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U.S. pins hopes on Darfur rebel

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published July 26, 2006

WASHINGTON - Rebel leader Minni Minnawi's decision to accept a peace agreement designed to end what the United States calls genocide in western Sudan earned him a meeting with President Bush.

A major topic of discussion Tuesday at the White House was sure to be Bush's desire to bring African Union peacekeepers under the blue flag and helmets of the United Nations in Sudanese Liberation Movement leader Minnawi's Darfur region.

The White House said Monday the focus of the meeting "will be on how to broaden support for the Darfur peace agreement, facilitate its implementation and ensure the expeditious deployment of U.N. peacekeepers to Darfur."

Darfur has been wracked with violence since January 2003.

Minnawi is the only major rebel leader to sign the May 5 agreement to end more than three years of carnage in Darfur, a massive desert area on Sudan's border with Chad.

The loser in the power struggle, Abdulwahid Elnur, sent representatives to the negotiations but refused to sign the resulting document. So did Khalil Ibrahim, head of the more religion-based Justice and Equality Movement.

Although the agreement has held in some areas, signs of trouble have appeared. Two weeks ago at the United Nations, Jan Egeland, the U.N. humanitarian chief, said the region is facing a new wave of killings and rapes from fighting between rebel factions that displaced thousands of villagers. Egeland blamed Minnawi's faction of the Sudanese Liberation Movement.

Minnawi said his forces were not involved.

Under the agreement, Minnawi will become senior assistant to the military president, Omar el-Bashir, which in turn would make Minnawi head of what will be the Darfur Authority. That administration would run Darfur as an autonomous part of Sudan once terms of the peace accord, including disarmament of all rebel groups, have been implemented.

[Last modified July 26, 2006, 01:55:23]