Jibril Ibrahim, the chairman of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), said Darfuri armed movements will not participate in the upcoming preparatory conference in Addis Ababa without the presence of the Sudanese opposition alliance and civil society organizations.
Ibrahim told Radio Tamazuj in an interview from Paris yesterday that the groups have not yet received an invitation from the AU mediators for the preparatory meeting.
“The government wants to meet the armed movements only in order to talk about personal guarantees for the participants at the dialogue,” he said. “We do not seek personal guarantees for ourselves, but rather we need guarantees for the people, because that dialogue will lead to a radical change in the governance of the country.
“So to sit down with them as armed movements means nothing,” he said. “It is valueless.”
On Saturday, an AU official announced that negotiations on Darfur and the Two Areas will precede the preparatory meeting by two or three days and that wider consultations are going with all political parties, according to the Sudan News Agency.