UN Security Council chairman urges early Sudan accord

NAIROBI, Nov 17 (AFP) — The chairman of the UN Security Council called Wednesday on the Sudanese government and southern rebels to sign an early peace deal to end the two sides’ protracted civil war.

John Danforth, the US ambassador to the United Nations.

John Danforth, the US ambassador to the United Nations, was in Nairobi to chair a special Security Council meeting in the Kenyan capital Thursday and Friday focussing on Sudan.

“We are here because we care about Sudan,” he said, speaking before the diplomatic community here.

But he added: “I would say to the two sides in this negotiation that it would be presumptuous to say that the focus of the international community would be there forever.”

The Security Council meeting — the first in 14 years to be held outside New York — is set to focus on Sudan’s main civil war between the Sudanese government and the southern rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M).

The Security Council was expected to adopt a resolution on the conflict, while it was hoped the Sudanese government in Khartoum and the SPLA/M would sign a protocol committing them to reach a definitive peace accord by the year’s end, diplomats said here.

Meanwhile in Strasbourg, the European Union Parliament called on the Security Council to slap an overall arms embargo and targetted sanctions on Sudan in a bid to help end the north-south war as well as a separate conflict that broke out last year in the western Darfur region, pitting government-backed Arab militia against two black African rebel groups.

The call came after European leaders on November 4 expressed grave concern about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Darfur, and reiterated their readiness to help the African Union to expand a mission there.

At the instigation of the United States, the UN Security Council meeting here was set principally to put pressure on Khartoum and the SPLM/A to finalise a deal to end a war that has claimed 1.5 million lives and displaced more than four million people since 1983.

Such a deal may provide impetus for resolving the conflict in Darfur, where tens of thousands have been killed and some 1.6 million displaced since February 2003.

Also Wednesday, both the government and the SPLA said a final deal to end their 21-year-old conflict would be reached within days of peace talks resuming on November 26.