Word: nur
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...hard to imagine a starker contrast between this gracious eatery and the ravaged villages of Darfur, yet among the diners here is a man who could hold the key to peace in the devastating conflict in western Sudan. "The Sudan regime is an outlaw regime," Abdul Wahid el Nur, leader of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement, shouts, slamming his fist on the cafe table. "They do not respect peace accords...
Since fleeing to Paris last February, Nur has repeated the same message to President Bush's special envoy for Sudan, Andrew Natsios; French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner; and the former U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson. A steady stream of leading diplomats has met with Nur to plead with him to attend international peace talks with Sudan's government. "Everybody has been to see him, anybody who thinks they can have any influence whatsoever," says a European aid worker, who asked not to be named. "People are really, really, really trying to persuade him." That's because the mass killing...
Pressure on Nur has escalated in recent weeks, with the first major international peace talks in 18 months on Darfur scheduled to open in Libya on October 27. The purpose of that meeting is to get all the parties to the conflict to agree to a cease-fire that would allow 26,000 U.N.-mandated African Union troops in to protect civilians and keep the peace...
...while the government has agreed to attend the talks in Tripoli, from his refuge in Paris Abdulwahid El-Nur is refusing to go. "I don't care about the peace talks at all," he says angrily. "We are working for real peace...
...Nur hardly looks like a rebel leader. A rotund man, he races between meetings in a checked suit jacket and charcoal wool trousers, clutching a mobile phone. But if his appearance is misleading, there's no doubting that Nur has the loyalty of many of the military commanders among the splintered rebel organizations in Darfur, according to aid workers who have recently traveled around the region. They say Nur remains especially popular among the more than 2 million displaced people languishing in camps. Driven from their villages across a vast, blighted landscape, those people are key to whether a peace...