MINNAWI LAMENTS NCP "BROKEN PROMISES," BUT WILL

C O N F I D E N T I A L KHARTOUM 001572 SIPDIS DEPARTMENT FOR AF A/S FRAZER, AF/SPG, SE WILLIAMSON, NSC FOR BPITTMAN AND CHUDSON, ADDIS ABABA ALSO FOR USAU E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/22/2018 TAGS: PGOV PREL UN AU SU SUBJECT: MINNAWI LAMENTS NCP "BROKEN PROMISES," BUT WILL KEEP TRYING REF: A. KHARTOUM 1559 ¶B. KHARTOUM 1530 ¶C. KHARTOUM 1528 ¶D. KHARTOUM 1445 ¶E. KHARTOUM 1422 Classified By: CDA Alberto M. Fernandez, reasons 1.4 (b) and (d). ¶1. (C) Senior Advisor to the President and SLM leader Minni Minnawi told CDA Fernandez on October 22 that the NCP is, not surprisingly, breaking their word to him given at a September 19 El Fasher meeting between him and VP Ali Osman Taha (reftel e). Minnawi spoke to Charge after a late night meeting with Taha. Minni had been seeking a meeting with either President Bashir or VP Taha for the past 4 days to press them to fulfill the truly transformative parts of the El Fasher agreement, which was supposed to energize the moribund 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA),signed by Minnawi with the Khartoum Government. CDA Fernandez told Minnawi that Sudan's abiding by the DPA and the El Fasher agreement (which Fernandez witnessed) is one tangible way to see whether the Sudanese regime intends to keep its word. So far the results are not heartening. ¶2. (C) Minni said that a diffident Taha "seemed to be back-tracking" from the accord he had forged last month in Darfur. "Either he has been undercut by Bashir, (hard-line Presidential Advisor) Nafie, and (Minister of Defense) Abderahim Hussein, or he never had the power in the first place," noted Minnawi. Taha said that he could not now authorize funding for the Transitional Darfur Regional Authority (TDRA),the political entity ostensibly controlled by Minnawi or allocate 30 million Sudanese pounds (about $15 million) for reconstruction funds to be used by Minnawi as part of the Darfur Reconstruction and Development Fund. Instead he suggested that Minnawi provide Minister of Finance Awad al-Jaz with a list of projects that the central government could agree to fund in Darfur that would benefit areas where Minni's partisans are strongest. "This is not what we agreed to last month," he noted. ¶3. (C) Increasingly frustrated, Minnawi hopes to meet Al-Jaz on the margins of the October 23 GNU cabinet meeting to ascertain what is actually possible as far as tangible funding. He noted that the regime had "done the easy things" after the accords, but was still refraining from taking steps that would actually strengthen Minni's hands as the sole Darfuri rebel signatory to the DPA. He noted that the regime was trying to keep him busy with illusory work, such as chairing the Reconciliation Committee for the Sudan's People Initiative (SPI),or dealing with Presidential Affairs Minister Bakri Salih on housekeeping issues such as transport, stipends and decrees. ¶4. (C) Minnawi wondered how long he should keep trying before giving up. He said that he knew that the NCP continued to keep some SLM dissidents, like Mustafa Treib, on ice in case it needed to use them once again to try to subvert Minnawi's organization in Khartoum. At this point, he plans to "see the agreement through," exhausting every possibility before throwing up his hands and returning to the field in North Darfur. ¶5. (C) Comment: Minnawi fears, as we do, that Khartoum intends to do only the minimum required to keep him on board and the DPA on life support, while the NCP tries (perhaps, with Qatari money) to woo rebel leaders Khalil Ibrahim and Abdul Wahid Nur to the negotiating table with offers of a more generous agreement. It is hard to conceive, though, that leaving Minnawi twisting in the wind would have much appeal to his Darfuri rivals. Despite their glee at his discomfiture, Khartoum is actually providing a very graphic and recent depiction of the peril and cost of coming to an agreement with the NCP if you don't have the military or political clout to force compliance. End comment. FERNANDEZ