Darfur Rebels Reject Sudan Peace Offer

Mini Mini Manawe, right, a leader of the Sudan Liberation Movement rebel group, speaks with Abdulwahid Mohammed during Darfur peace talks in Abuja, Nigeria Sunday, April 30, 2006. African Union mediators brokering peace talks among warring parties in Sudan's Darfur region said Sunday they were extending by 48 hours a deadline for the peace parley's end.(AP Photo/Sunday Alamba) (Sunday Alamba - AP)

He said the Sudanese government has followed through in name only on similar agreements in the south of the country, where another war ended with a peace agreement last January.

African Union mediator Salim said his team tried to strike a compromise on rebel demands for autonomy.

The peace agreement would create a transitional authority for the region including rebel representatives, and proposes that the people of Darfur vote by 2010 on whether to create a single geographical entity out of the three current Darfur states.

A unified Darfur would presumably have more political weight, and the rebels had demanded its creation by presidential decree.

The rebels had also demanded that a third vice president, from Darfur, be added to the national government. The compromise draft called for the president to include a Darfur official, initially nominated by the rebels, among his top advisers.

Salim said the expert would have "all the attributes of a vice president, except the name," and noted Sudan's constitution, drafted under the treaty that ended the north-south war, permits only two vice presidents.

In accepting the draft, the Sudanese government agreed to disarm militia it is accused of unleashing on Darfur civilians, commit millions of dollars to rebuilding a region devastated by poverty and war, and compensate victims of the fighting, Salim said.

Monday marked the first day of the World Food Program's cut in food rations by half for about 3 million refugees in Darfur because of a shortage of money. Antonia Paradela, a spokeswoman, said they will know by the end of the week what the impact of the cuts are.

Darfur has increasingly drawn the world's attention. The U.S. State Department said Monday that it was sending its No. 2 official, Deputy Secretary Robert Zoellick, to Nigeria in an attempt to break the stalemate.

The move followed weekend demonstrations in Washington and other U.S. cities to demand that the U.S. government act more decisively to end the suffering in Darfur.

Decades of low-level tribal clashes over land and water in Darfur erupted into large-scale violence in early 2003 when the rebels took up arms. The central government is accused of responding by unleashing Arab tribal militias known as Janjaweed to murder and rape civilians and lay waste to villages. Sudan denies backing the Janjaweed.

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Associated Press correspondent Mohamed Osman contributed to this report from Khartoum, Sudan.