CAIRO: An Egyptian initiative has been proposed to bring Sudanese rebel factions to Cairo in an attempt to get them on board the Abuja agreement for Darfur, according to Sudan's National Democratic Alliance leader Mohammed Othman Al-Merghani. Al-Merghani was in Cairo meeting with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit to discuss the situation in Darfur which has seen 200,000 people killed since 2003. In statements made to the press after the meeting, Abul Gheit said that his talks with Al-Merghani centred on attempting to alleviate the crisis in Darfur, and the current situation in Sudan. Al-Merghani said Egypt is attempting to bring rebel factions to Cairo and persuade them to sign up to the Abuja Peace Pact. The Sudanese government had reached an agreement with one of the three rebel factions in Abuja in May 2006, but not the other two, which further inflamed the fighting. After a meeting with Mubarak and Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi last Tuesday, presidential spokesman Suleiman Awad said "there is no alternative [in Darfur] to the broadening of the Abuja accord to include all rebel factions. It is clear that Sudan's Arab neighbors do not support the international community's wishes to send multinational peacekeeping troops to help avert the crisis in Darfur. "A result of international peacekeeping forces is to reduce Egypt's role in Sudan, Nabil Abdel-Fatah from Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies previously told The Daily Star Egypt by way of explaining Egypt's reticence in accepting the idea of a multinational peace force. Additionally, "Qaddafi is funding many of the factions in the fighting, and so is the Sudanese government, Abdel-Fatah said. Advisor to the Sudanese President Moustafa Othman Ismail said Saturday that the West was pressuring the Sudanese government over Darfur to get them to normalize relations with Israel. Ismail also claimed that the Western media was painting the Darfur crisis as the biggest human tragedy threatening world peace. The reason for everyone's inability to stem the tide in Darfur, according to Abdel-Fatah, is the "absence of any minimum consensus within Sudan to solve the issue. Rather, the warring factions are outdoing each other in the fighting. Abdel-Fatah added that "the Sudanese government is using the pressure from the international community to prolong the crisis, such as by denying the major transgressions of the government forces and the Janjaweed. On the other hand "the US and UK are using Darfur as a pretext to enforce their vision of Sudan. The UN and the West also want to prolong the crisis so as to introduce international peacekeeping forces, Abdel-Fatah said. "However, he added, "that is just a result of Al-Bashir's actions in marginalizing the problems in Darfur and the South.
