UN Security Council considers meeting in Nairobi on Sudan
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 14 (AFP) — The UN Security Council is considering holding a formal meeting next month in Nairobi, a rare gathering outside the UN headquarters here aimed at pushing forward the peace process in Sudan, British ambassador Emyr Jones Parry said Thursday.
The United States proposed holding the meeting November 17-18, but “we still have a lot of details to sort out,” said Jones Parry, whose country holds the council’s rotating presidency this month.
“The understanding would be that the visit should stimulate the (Naivasha) peace process, and not be used by any of the parties as an excuse not to make progress, quite the opposite,” he told reporters.
“The visit would be predicated on the assumption that there would have been progress and without it a visit would be less likely.”
Since September 2003 talks, between Khartoum and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army have been held in Naivasha, 80 kilometres (50 miles) northwest of Nairobi.
The two sides have entered a final phase of talks on a peace deal to end one of Africa’s longest conflicts.
The war in Sudan erupted in 1983 when southern-based rebels rose up against Khartoum, to end Arab and Muslim domination and marginalisation of the black, animist and Christian south and has so far claimed at least 1.5 million people and displaced four million others.
The international community and the United Nations believe that a successful conclusion to the talks would help resolve a separate conflict in the western region of Darfur, where the United States says a genocide has taken place.
Khartoum is under the threat of UN-imposed sanctions on its vital oil industry if it fails to rein in its militias, accused of committing massacres in Darfur, mainly against black residents of the vast region.
The 20-month-old crisis in Darfur has left some 50,000 people dead, displaced an estimated 1.4 million and forced a further 200,000 to flee into neighbouring Chad, according to UN figures.
The Security Council has only met twice outside of the UN headquarters, once in 1972 in Addis Ababa during the war in Southern Rhodesia, and again the following year in Panama.