Libya meeting to focus on Darfur road map – UN
July 5, 2007 (UNITED NATIONS) — The U.N. and African Union envoys trying to promote a political solution to the four-year-old conflict in Sudan’s western Darfur region have invited key regional and international players to a meeting in Libya in mid-July to discuss how to launch new negotiations.
U.N. deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe said Thursday that the July 15-16 meeting in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, will focus on a road map prepared by U.N. envoy Jan Eliasson and his AU counterpart Salim Ahmed Salim aimed at reviving peace talks and reaching an agreement to end the conflict.
Invitations to the ministerial meeting have been sent to Sudan, Chad, Egypt, Eritrea, and the Arab League; the five permanent Security Council nations — the U.S., Britiain, France, Russia and China — and key donors, including Canada, the Netherlands, Norway and the European Union, Okabe said.
While much attention has been focused on deploying a 23,000-strong joint AU-U.N. force to Darfur to replace the 7,000 beleaguered African Union troops now on the ground, both organizations have also stressed the importance of getting all the groups fighting in Darfur to the peace table.
Last month, Eliasson said the road to negotiations has become even more complicated because of the increasing number of rebel groups. In just three weeks, the number of opposition movements jumped from nine to 12, and he said that number could rise.
Eliasson presented the road map to the Security Council on June 8: The first step, getting all political initiatives on the same track and ultimately under the U.N.-AU umbrella, started in May and continued in June. The second step, conducting shuttle diplomacy to prepare for negotiations, was to start in late June and continue in July. The third step, the negotiation phase, would hopefully start at the end of the summer.
Okabe said “the purpose of the Tripoli meeting is to take stock of the progress achieved over the last two months, assess the implementation of the road map, and review proposals on the way forward, especially on how to launch the negotiation phase of the road map.”
More than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been displaced in the Darfur region of western Sudan since 2003, when ethnic African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated Sudanese government, accusing it of decades of neglect. Sudan’s government is accused of retaliating by unleashing a militia of Arab nomads known as the janjaweed, a charge it denies.
The beleaguered African Union force has been unable to stop the fighting, and neither has the Darfur Peace Agreement, signed a year ago by the government and one rebel group. Other rebel factions have called the deal insufficient.
The meeting is a follow up to a meeting on Darfur held in Tripoli on April 28-29 which explored ways to persuade all the groups fighting in Darfur to sign a comprehensive peace agreement.
At that meeting, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi urged African, Arab and Western diplomats to work with Sudanese rebels to find an immediate solution to the crisis in Darfur.
Eliasson arrived in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, on Wednesday evening and flew to el-Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, for a series of meetings on Thursday. Salim is scheduled to arrive in Khartoum on Saturday, Okabe said.
(AP)