A meeting meant to unite fractured Darfur rebels in a bid to restart peace talks with the government was delayed Friday as the delegates trickled in late to the Tanzanian town of Arusha where the talks are being held, reports said, according to dpa. The meeting, convened by the United Nations and the African Union (AU), comes days after the UN approved a beefed-up, 26,000-strong force for Darfur but its success is threatened by boycotts of some key figures and groups. Abdul Wahid Mohammad al-Nur, a founding member of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), said he would not attend the meeting, which is set to close on Sunday. "The SLM is not going to participate in this Arusha meeting. I would like the international community to stop the killing of my people first, then we can negotiate in a good place without any preconditions," he told the BBC. UN special envoy to Sudan Jan Eliasson and his AU counterpart Salim Ahmed Salim said they were optimistic about the meeting, which would go on despite the missing rebel representatives, the BBC reported. The vows of boycotts have been spurred by the absence of one key rebel figure, Suleiman Jamous, who is being treated at a hospital in Kordofan, outside of Darfur, and is under threat of arrest by Khartoum should he leave. Jamous has acted as a liaison between the rebel groups and humanitarian workers in Darfur, providing a crucial link to help relief supplies reach poverty-stricken Darfuris. Earlier this week, a group of religious leaders, celebrities and activists wrote to the government to demand Jamous be allowed to pass safely to Tanzania, highlighting the importance of the man's attendance. Only one faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement and Army signed the Darfur Peace Agreement with the government in May last year, which has not stopped the violence and sparked a splintering of other rebel groups. The UN and AU have urged the divided factions to unite, as a first step toward hashing out a new peace deal with the government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and find a solution to the four-year conflict which has killed more then 200,000 people and uprooted 2.5 million. The crisis began when rebels took up arms against Khartoum, charging that Darfur was neglected and undeveloped. Sudan is accused of arming militias known as Janjaweed to quash the rebellion.
