French president urges Sudan to accept Darfur peacekeepers

Feb 15, 2007 (CANNES) — The crisis in Darfur is a humanitarian disaster that threatens the entire region, French President Jacques Chirac said Thursday while urging Sudan to accept peacekeepers.

“A policy based on the worst possible line of action can lead nowhere but to horror,” Chirac said in opening a summit of some 40 African heads of state and government leaders, including Sudan’s president.

He called on “all the belligerents and the government of Sudan…to agree to the deployment of a peace force, to cease the attacks, to protect the civilian population and humanitarian workers.”

Chirac was hoping to bring Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir together with leaders from neighboring Chad and Central African Republic for talks later Thursday on the troubled western region of Sudan.

More than 200,000 people have been killed and some 2.5 million people have fled their homes since violence broke out in Darfur between pro-government janjaweed militia and ethnic African groups in 2003. The U.S. government has described the violence as genocide.

A 7,000-strong African Union peacekeeping force has been trying to quell the ongoing violence, but the force is underfunded and ill-equipped. Al-Bashir rejected a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for 22,000 U.N. peacekeepers to replace the A.U. force in Darfur. But he also has sent mixed signals about a joint U.N.-A.U. force.

(AP)