Daily Update: Rebel leaders may not be ready for talks by December

In diplomacy-- Leaders of the two main Darfuri rebel groups say that they will not attend meetings held in December by the UN and AU unless the venue of those talks is changed and the number of participants is limited. UN negotiators had asked to reconvene peace talks in the first week of December after the meetings at the end of October had stalled due to boycotts by the main rebel groups. The leaders of the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudan Liberation Army refused to participate in talks because several other splinter groups had been invited to the talks, and because hosting president Muammar Gaddafi had made remarks saying that the current conflict is a local and tribal one which needed no international resolution. The JEM and SLA believe that they will not have enough time to bring all the rebel groups together before the December talks, and will not attend talks unless they are the only rebel groups invited.

Chief UN negotiator Ahmad Fawzi stated that ”the rebel movements should get their act together.” He went on to ask the Darfuri movements to “unify their position”.

A group of European aid workers, journalists, and flight staff were released after being arrested in Chad. The Europeans, working for an organization called Zoe’s Ark, were charged with kidnapping African children, who they intended to place with host families. They were released after French president Nicolas Sarkozy met with the president of Chad. While the aid workers may have had good intentions of removing the children, who they believed to be orphans of the Darfur struggle, their methods have come under harsh criticism from their own members and the French government.

On the ground- On Saturday, Darfur rebels announced they would release 5 oil workers they had taken as hostages. The JEM had attacked the Defra oil field, one of the most lucrative in Sudan, after threatening oil companies in the area to leave or become targets. The workers were Sudanese, Iraqi, and Egyptian, and the JEM was responding to Egyptian, UN, and humanitarian calls to release them.

On Wednesday, the UNAMID force set up its base in the town of El Fasher. The main part of the force is due to be deployed in early 2008.

In the activist movement- The Save Darfur Coalition called today for an emergency UN Security Council meeting to condemn continuing violence in the region and to end delays to the deployment of a hybrid AU-UN peace force. The call was written to the president of Indonesia, which holds the rotating presidency of the Council. The Indonesian ambassador to the UN said that no other Security Council member had called for such urgency, and so the process would continue steadily but slowly.

The Dream for Darfur Olympic Torch Relay reached Seattle Sunday.