KHARTOUM - Darfur rebel leader Khalil Ibrahim said on Tuesday he would carry on fighting during upcoming peace talks until a final settlement is reached to end the conflict in western Sudan.
Ibrahim, head of the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), also said he was dismissing his deputy, Bahr Idriss Abu Garda, accusing him of secret meetings with the government to undermine the movement.
"We will not cease fire before we reach a political settlement," Ibrahim told Reuters from Darfur. "Ceasing fire is a termination of the resistance and revolution."
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said this month that he would observe a ceasefire in Darfur when talks with rebels, scheduled for Oct. 27 in Libya, begin.
Ibrahim, whose group has been the mainstay behind clashes with the army in the far east of Darfur in recent months, said JEM would attend talks but would not lay down arms.
"There is no goodwill from the other side. This is only a trick," he said, adding the three rebel movements that negotiated in previous talks until May 2006 had abided by an earlier truce, which the government violated.
Only one faction signed the 2006 peace deal which has been rejected by many in Darfur as inadequate.
Since then the rebels have split into more than a dozen rival groups. But a recent military alliance between JEM and Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) Unity faction has made them the biggest military threat to Khartoum in Darfur.
SANCTIONS THREAT
In a sign of further rebel splits, Ibrahim said Abu Garda, a veteran of the conflict, was sacked and JEM would reshuffle its executive to strengthen ranks before talks.
"He is working together with the government," he said.
Mediators have described government attempts to negotiate deals with individual commanders as "unhelpful" as rebels worked to reach a common platform ahead of peace talks.
SLA founder and chairman Abdel Wahed Mohamed el-Nur has said he will not attend peace talks until there is security on the ground. He has few troops in Darfur but commands massive popular support, especially among Darfur's largest Fur tribe.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte has threatened sanctions for those who do not attend talks.
