Sudan held secret talks with UN Chief on Darfur force

By Wasil Ali

August 13, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — Sudanese officials have been holding secret talks with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in different parts of the world regarding the Darfur peacekeeping force.

Sirag Al-Deen Hamed, head of the Peace department in Sudan’s foreign ministry said during a forum in Khartoum that said that there were direct channels of communication with Ban Ki-moon unlike his predecessor Kofi Annan.

The U.N. Security Council on July 31 authorized a peacekeeping force for Darfur made up of 20,000 peacekeepers and 6,000 civilian police.

The UN chief has been consistently urging world powers to pursue diplomacy with Khartoum so that it agrees to the deployment of UN peacekeepers in Darfur.

Bloomberg has reported last March that the Secretary-General accepted Sudan’s demand that the soldiers be supplied by the African Union with only logistical support from UN forces during a meeting with the Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir in Riyadh.

Hamed said that confrontation between the hybrid force and the army is a possibility that his government is prepared for. However he described resolution 1769 as a “victory for Sudanese diplomacy”.

The Darfur conflict began in 2003 when an ethnic minority rose up against the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum, which then was accused of enlisting the Janjaweed militia group to help crush the rebellion.

(ST)