Sudan: Humanitarian access issue forces talks collapse

Peace talks between the Sudanese government and rebels from the troubled Darfur region have collapsed after three weeks, one of the two main rebel factions said today.

Sudan’s government and Darfur’s two rebel movements said they would abide by an African Union proposal to break for at least three weeks before resuming their efforts to hammer out an agreement.

But “the talks have collapsed already”, Ahmed Tugod Lissan of the Justice and Equity rebel movement insisted, saying his movement would not sign an accord on humanitarian access that would have been the talk’s one clear success.