peace (?) agreement in darfur (finally)

Sudan and Largest Rebel Faction Sign Pact to End Carnage

By LYDIA POLGREEN and JOEL BRINKLEY

KHARTOUM, Sudan May 5 — The government of Sudan and the largest rebel faction fighting in the conflict in Darfur signed a pact today to end the carnage there.

But the leader of second-largest faction stormed out of the signing ceremony moments before it began, casting uncertainty over whether the peace accord, hammered out in three days and nights of marathon talks between top western and African diplomats, would survive.

As he presided over the brief ceremony in Abuja, Nigeria's president called the leader of the rebel faction signing, Minni Minnawi, "not only a good soldier but also a good statesman."

He said that efforts to persuade the other two rebel factions to join the accord would continue.

"Those who did not sign, we will continue to appeal to them," Mr. Obasanjo said. "Unless the right spirit, unless the right attitude and the right disposition is there, this document is not worth the paper it is signed on."

Robert Zoellick, the United States deputy secretary of state, drove the negotiations to this partial victory. He said this morning that some followers of one of the rebel leaders who refused to sign had been complaining about his decision. And a senior State Department official traveling with Mr. Zoellick said the Untied States and the other nations intended simply to ignore the other two groups, the Justice and Equality Movement and a small branch of the dominant Sudan Liberation Army.

Mediators applauded and patted each other on the back as the agreement was announced in Abuja, Nigeria, this morning. The African Union's chief negotiator, Salim Ahmed Salim, called it "a big day for the people of Darfur.

While officials said they would ignore the two dissenting groups, they also said they would continue trying to persuade them to sign the agreement. If the pact does not ultimately include the other rebel factions, it will face deep and immediate peril. No one is certain how many troops the smaller groups have, and their leaders refuse to say.

In North Darfur, firefights between the two factions of the Sudan Liberation Army, one led by a member of the Zaghawa tribe and the other led by a Fur, have let loose a cascade of misery as the two groups have battled for territorial dominance ahead of a peace deal, according to diplomats and aid officials.

Already, "the S.L.A. has in some cases acted very badly in these clashes," said one western diplomat in Khartoum who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the negotiations. "There are signs of behavior not unlike the janjaweed, like using rape as a weapon."

The smaller S.L.A. group is headed by Abdel Wahid Muhammed Nur, who was the longtime, sole leader sole of the entire rebel group until last fall. In November, one of his commanders, Mani Arko Minawi, had himself elected chairman at a meeting to which Mr. Nur was not invited. Since then, relations between the two men have been frigid.

Most rebels chose to follow Mr. Minawi, but Mr. Nur still has a following.

The Justice and Equality Movement, an Islamic group with ties to Hassan al-Turabi, the religious hardliner who invited Osama bin Laden to Sudan, is the smallest and least powerful group. It requested the most radical changes to the peace agreement, but some diplomats involved in the negotiations said they did not regard this group as a significant threat to the peace deal.

With the agreement of one rebel faction, negotiators hoped that the other groups would jump on board "to avoid getting left behind," said one diplomat, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the talks.

Late on Thursday, the Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, had invited all the negotiators to his presidential villa to provide a formal setting for the signing. Kofi Annan, the secretary general of the United Nations, called an emergency meeting on Sudan and asked representatives from 18 nations, plus the European Commission, the Arab League and the African Union, to press both sides to reach an agreement.

The efforts appeared to be the culmination of a week of intensive negotiation over efforts to end more than three years of carnage that has left more than 200,000 people dead.

Last Sunday, Sudan accepted a peace agreement drafted by the African Union, but the rebel factions balked, and mediators put off the Sunday deadline for 48 hours. On Monday, Mr. Zoellick arrived in Abuja and began directing the negotiations. Then on Tuesday, the mediators gave the negotiators another 48 hours, to end at midnight on Thursday.

On Wednesday, Mr. Zoellick and his staff reopened the draft agreement and started making modest changes.

If rebel leaders "fail to grasp their best chance for peace, then Darfur faces a cataclysm," Alex de Waal, an expert on Sudan who is a member of the African Union mediation team, wrote in an open letter made public on Thursday.

"All those who believe in peace for Darfur will ask ourselves whether we did enough to bring it about, and the needless deaths that occur will scar our consciences. Today is the day."

In an address at the 100th anniversary dinner for the American Jewish Committee in Washington on Thursday, President Bush renewed his call for the United Nations and NATO to help shore up African peacekeeping efforts in Darfur, saying, "We must understand that the rape and the murder and the suffering must be stopped." Flanked by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Mr. Annan, he added, "We will not tolerate the genocide taking place in that country."

Lydia Polgreen reported from Khartoum, Sudan, for this article, and Joel Brinkley from Washington. Senan John Murray contributed reporting from Abuja, Nigeria.