CAIRO: Egypt s Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit met officials from Darfur rebel groups on Saturday to push for peace talks between them and the Sudanese government, the state news agency MENA reported. The meeting, in which United Resistance Front leader Baher Idris Abu Garda and heads of Sudan Liberation Army factions took part, came a week after Cairo hosted officials from the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebel group. We came to Egypt after a generous offer from Egypt s leadership pursuant to previous efforts to unite the visions of Darfur movements to resolve the (Darfur conflict) issue, MENA quoted Abu Garda as saying. The meeting took place a day before Sudanese President Omar Al-Beshir was due to meet his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak in Cairo. Al-Beshir is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes in Darfur. Abu Garda also faces charges of war crimes by the ICC over an attack that killed 12 peacekeepers in Darfur. He appeared in May before the court, which has yet to confirm the charges. Aboul Gheit said after meeting the rebel groups that Egypt as a neighbor had a strategic interest in helping to secure peace in Darfur. There may be friendly countries or the United Nations or regional countries which have interests and try to achieve peace and stability in Darfur, and this is something we support and push for, he said. But Egypt has shared borders with Sudan. Qatar, which has fraught relations with Egypt and has sought to expand its own diplomatic clout in the region, has hosted talks between JEM and Khartoum since February. They agreed on confidence-building measures in February but the talks were adjourned in June. Khartoum has refused to release JEM prisoners, sentencing more than 100 JEM rebels, including two half-brothers of the group s leader Khalil Ibrahim, to death over a 2008 attack on Khartoum. Khartoum says it will not release prisoners before a ceasefire takes hold. The United Nations says about 300,000 people have died in Darfur since ethnic minority rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated Khartoum government in 2003, complaining of discrimination. Sudan says about 10,000 people have died.
