Sudan protesters reject talks after 108 killed in crackdown

KHARTOUM - Sudanese protest leaders on Wednesday turned down an offer by the ruling military council for talks and demanded justice for a crackdown that doctors said has left 108 people dead.

Security forces moved in to brutally disperse a protest sit-in on Monday.

The Rapid Support Forces, paramilitaries said by rights groups to have their origins in the Janjaweed militias accused of abuses during the 16-year-old conflict in Darfur are thought to have been largely behind the crackdown.

The Central Committee for Sudanese Doctors close to the protest movement said on Wednesday that at least 108 people had been killed in the crackdown, including 40 whose bodies were recovered from the Nile, and more than 500 wounded.

Sudan has been controlled by a military council since it ousted veteran president Omar al-Bashir in April after protesters demanded an end to his authoritarian rule before agreeing a three-year transition period to a civilian administration.

But army ruler General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan said following the crackdown that the agreement had been ditched and an election would take place within nine months -- a plan rejected by demonstrators.

On Wednesday, however, Burhan said those in "the military council open our arms to negotiate with no restriction", an offer that the protest leaders were quick to reject.

"The Sudanese people are not open for talks," said Amjad Farid, a spokesman for the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) which spearheaded protests that led to the ouster of Bashir.

"The Sudanese people are not open to this TMC (Transitional Military Council) that kills people and we need justice and accountability before talks about any political process," he told AFP.

Farid said both the SPA and umbrella protest group the Alliance for Freedom and Change would "continue using all non-violent tools and civil disobedience in resisting the TMC".

The rejection came after the commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces accused of carrying out the deadly crackdown insisted the country would not be allowed to slip into "chaos".

"We will not allow chaos... we must impose the authority of the state through the law," Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, deputy chief of the military council, told his forces in a televised address.