Ahmed Ibrahim Diraige is the former Governor of Darfur and is currently Chairman of the Sudan Federal Democratic Alliance and head of the opposition National Redemption Front Alliance group of rebels.

He was born in Darfur, the son of a tribal leader. After finishing his education he served in various ministries - Commerce, Finance and Development, Planning - before being elected as an independent Member of the Sudanese Parliament in 1965. He rose to Minister of Labour and Cooperatives in 1966 but saw his Government career come to an end when he fell out with Colonel Nimieri in 1969.

He returned to public duty for several years in 1980 as the Governor of Darfur, but went into self-imposed exile in 1983 when he once again disagreed publicly with the Nimieri Government.

In 1994 he formed the Sudan Federal Democratic Alliance, an organisation that has campaigned for famine relief and conflict resolution in Darfur and is part of the National Redemption Front Alliance of rebel groups.

He graduated with a BA in Art from the University of Khartoum in 1957 before completing a BA in Social Sciences and Economics at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom.

Sirajuddin Hamid Yousuf is the Director of the Crisis Management Department at the Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was Director of the Department of Peace and Humanitarian Affairs between December 2006 and January 2008.

Prior to returning to Khartoum in 2006 Mr Yousuf served as Sudan's Ambassador to Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda between 2001 and 2005. Before joining the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Mr Yousuf was a member of the Sudan National Assembly (Parliament), serving between 1996 and 1999.

With an LLM from Pretoria University in South Africa, Mr Yousuf runs his own law practice in Khartoum and has practised in New York and Riyadh.

He has written and presented numerous papers on International Humanitarian Law, Human Rights, Women's rights and International security and is a member of the board of trustees of GRIDGES, a Sudanese NGO working in the field of public diplomacy.

Nadim Hasbani is an Africa specialist at the International Crisis Group (ICG), an independent and non-profit NGO committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict. The ICG was recently ranked as one of the top ten think tanks in the world.

He is part of the ICG team responsible for the monitoring of the conflict in Darfur and compiling reports on policy recommendations. In this capacity Mr. Hasbani has had several articles citing the danger of Arab complicity published in the international press, most notably in Le Courrier International and Al-Hayat.

Besides Darfur, Mr. Hasbani writes on security and defence procurement policies in Gulf countries and on reforms in the Arab world. He also provides political risk assessments on Lebanon and Syria.

Prior to joining the Crisis Group Media Unit in October 2004 Mr. Hasbani worked at the French defence equipment producer Giat Industries and at the Mission of the Arab League in Paris.

He graduated with a Master's degree in Political Science from Saint-Joseph University in Beirut, Lebanon and also holds a Master's in Journalism from the Institute for French Press at University Paris II. Mr Hasbani is currently completing a PhD in Middle Eastern Geopolitics at the French Institute of Geopolitics.

Zeid Al Sabban, Head of the African Affairs division at the Office of the Secretary General of the League of Arab States.

Zeid Al Sabban joined the Office of the Secretary General, Amr Moussa, in 2001 and is responsible for the Afro-Arab dossier.

Since joining the Arab League in 1993 Mr Al Sabban has worked extensively on Sudan. He has represented the Arab League in the Abuja peace talks on Darfur since August 2004 and was the Arab League signatory on the Darfur Peace Agreement. More recently he chaired the sixth and seventh rounds of the International Partners Meetings. He was a member of the Arab League fact finding missions to South Sudan in April 2003 and Darfur in March 2004.

In addition to his role in Sudan peace talks at the Arab League, he has been a member of several Arab League mediation teams to Somalia and Comoros and has worked on multilateral affairs and nuclear disarmament.

Mr Al Sabban was born in Damascus and educated in LesJesuites School. He has a Bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Cairo (1991) and a Master's degree in International Private Law from Paris Dauphine (1994).

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