Peace talks aimed at uniting the myriad rebel groups fighting the Sudanese government in Darfur - where 200,000 have died - seemed to be becoming irrelevant when a key rebel leader said he would not be attending.
In a luxury lodge in northern Tanzania, representatives of most of Darfur's rebel groups sat down yesterday to try to forge a common position before possible negotiations with Khartoum.
Coming just days after the UN agreed to send a 26,000 force to the war-torn province, the talks had seemed to represent a second coup for international mediators trying to end the four-year conflict.
But those hopes were dashed when Abdel Wahed Mohamed el-Nur, the head of the main faction of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement, stayed in Paris, from where he questioned both Khartoum's willingness to end the conflict and the legitimacy of some of the rebel leaders attending the talks. 'Peace negotiations need a conducive environment, but the government of Sudan is still killing people, thousands are being displaced,' he said.
While mediators from the African Union (AU) and UN tried to play down el-Nur's absence, it has dampened hopes that negotiations between the rebels and President Omar el-Bashir's government could begin soon.
El-Nur, who enjoys widespread support among the Fur ethnic group, refused to sign an internationally brokered peace deal with the Sudanese government in May 2006 in Abuja, Nigeria, rendering the so-called Darfur Peace Agreement largely meaningless.
The decision by the UN Security Council to allow a hybrid AU-UN force of 26,000 peacekeepers to replace the 7,000-strong AU mission will improve security, even if it takes several months to deploy. But it is widely acknowledged that, without a political settlement that addresses the rebels' demands of more autonomy and power-sharing at a national level, the crisis is Darfur will not end.
Some experts have questioned the deadline for the rebel meeting. 'The talks must be given the time they take,' said Judith Melby, of Christian Aid. 'Otherwise we will just be repeating the mistakes of Abuja, with tight deadlines and negotiating parties who did not really represent Darfurians.'