UN envoy discusses Darfur with AU, Sudan officials

Aug 8, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — The UN special envoy to Sudan held high-level talks today on Darfur with an adviser to Sudanese President Omar al Bashir and the AU special representative in Sudan.

Jan Pronk, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative, met with Presidential adviser Majzoub Alkhalifa and Ambassador Baba Gana Kingibe, the Special Representative of the AU Commission Chairperson in Sudan, a UN spokesman told reporters in New York.

Pronk also attended a swearing-in ceremony yesterday for a leader of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), Minni Minawi, who was appointed a Special Assistant to the President and ex-officio head of the Transitional Darfur Regional Authority, the spokesman added.

In May, the Sudanese Government and several rebel groups signed the Darfur Peace Agreement but the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Abdelwahid faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) refused to accept the accord.

President al Bashir has agreed on the need to strengthen the AU force in Sudan and consolidate the peace accord but has so far rejected the idea of a UN operation as being colonial or having a hidden objective, a charge that Secretary-General Kofi Annan and other world body officials have repeatedly rejected. The AU has itself called for UN peacekeepers to take over in Darfur.

(UN/ST)