Annan due in Sudan for Darfur talks

KHARTOUM, May 27 (AFP) — UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was due to arrive in Khartoum Friday for talks with Sudanese leaders in a bid to ease relief work and boost peace efforts in the conflict-torn province of Darfur.

Annan was to arrive in the Sudanese capital in the morning to meet UN officials before going into talks with First Vice President Ali Osman Taha and Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail, officials said.

The visit comes after Annan attended a conference in Addis Ababa where international donors pledged millions in further aid to an African Union peace mission charged with monitoring a shaky ceasefire between Khartoum and rebels.

“We are running a race against time, indeed it is a race against time,” Annan said at the conference.

“The situation remains unacceptable on the ground,” he said. “The violence is targetted at aid workers (but) where the AU is deployed these things do not happen.”

After visiting Khartoum he was due to visit the South Darfur state capital of Nyala on Saturday to witness at first hand the suffering of some of the over two million people displaced by the two-year conflict.

There he will visit the Kalma camp, one of dozens around the vast region, as well as the nearby village of Lebedu, which was reportedly destroyed by government-sponsored Arab militiamen.

UN officials have said Annan on his trip aims to rally support for the AU’s security presence, revitalise the political process, and focus attention on the need to sustain relief work.

African Union-sponsored peace talks between Khartoum and rebels in Darfur are to resume on June 10 in the Nigerian capital Abuja after a six-month suspension.

The launch of an uprising by Darfur ethnic minority rebels in early 2003 prompted the Khartoum government to unleash Arab militias in a scorched-earth campaign in which some 300,000 people have died.

On Sunday, the focus of Annan’s visit switches to south Sudan where a landmark January peace agreement between the government and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army promised an end to more than two decades of civil war.

The UN chief is to visit the south’s main city of Juba as well as the town of Rumbek, where the rebels have their provisional headquarters and where Annan will hold talks with SPLA leader John Garang.