JUBA: Minni Minnawi, the only Darfur rebel leader to have signed a peace accord with Khartoum, has accused the government of failing to implement the 2006 deal and says he is ready to do battle.
Four years after Minnawi went it alone among Darfur rebel chiefs to sign a Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) with the Khartoum government, which showered him with official titles, the honeymoon is over.
He predicted the south of the country would vote next month for independence, leaving northern Sudan to face its fate as a "failed state" and needing a total makeover.
The Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) faction leader, in an interview with AFP, accused Khartoum of failing to implement the agreement and the Sudanese army of attacking his supporters in Darfur.
Minnawi has moved to southern Sudan, abandoning his government-allocated office in Khartoum where he had been serving as "senior assistant" to President Omar Al-Bashir.
The government declared last week that its erstwhile partner was now an "enemy" and closed his Khartoum office, and the army attacked SLA supporters on Friday and Saturday.
"Our relation with the government of Khartoum was the DPA agreement.
Now they are canceling the DPA," Minnawi said in Juba, the capital of former rebel southern Sudan.
"They stated that our forces have become a target of the SAF forces (Sudanese army). That means they are pulling out of the DPA agreement," the SLA leader said.
"I can say very clearly that whenever they target our forces we will also target their forces," said Minnawi. "We will defend ourselves."
Sudanese army spokesman Sawarmi Khaled Saad blamed Minnawi’s group for the latest clashes. "Minnawi’s group began the rebellion and they are now a target of the armed forces," he told AFP.
"The agreement with them does not hold any more," he said of the DPA accord which expires in April 2011.
Two people were killed in fighting between Minnawi’s forces and Sudanese troops in the southern Darfur village Khor Abeche on Friday and Saturday.
Kemal Saiki, the spokesman for a joint UN and African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur, said one person was killed and four were wounded in Friday’s fighting.
He added that homes were burnt and people sought refuge with peacekeepers. Fighting on Saturday killed one person and wounded eight, he said.
The flare-up comes as three million people have registered to vote in a January 9 independence referendum to decide if south Sudan secedes, breaking up Africa’s largest nation.
"When we signed the agreement, we were thinking that this agreement has to change the situation in Darfur politically, economically and socially, and for security," he said, speaking in English.
He accused Bashir’s ruling National Congress Party of "maneuvering" for the past four years.
"A new environment has come out in Sudan which is the separation of south Sudan and the feeling that this government has failed totally to unify Sudan," Minnawi said.
"The causes and the problems which put south Sudan to separate is still remaining in Khartoum," he said, adding that Sudan would need a total "redesign" after the referendum.
Southerners "reject the policy of this (Khartoum) government" and will choose secession next month, Minnawi predicted, leaving behind northern Sudan as a "failed state."
Minnawi said he was ready to join the head of a larger SLA faction, Abdelwahid Nur, who lives in exile in France, for talks.
Nur has long refused to take part in the peace process with the Khartoum government, and he has proposed convening the SLA for talks in Paris on the future of Darfur and Sudan.
"Abdelwahid and I never stop contact with each other," said the rival SLA faction leader, adding that he was ready to attend the negotiations if invited to take part.
"Now we are talking about that," he said, asked if the SLA had plans for reunification.
