African leaders plan mission to Sudan over Darfur
Oct 10, 2006 (DAKAR) — Three African heads of state are preparing a mission to Sudan to try to persuade its president to accept the deployment of a United Nations-led peacekeeping force in Darfur, Senegal’s foreign minister said on Tuesday.
Cheikh Tidane Gadio told reporters he and his Nigerian counterpart would travel to Khartoum on Wednesday to prepare the ground for the visit to Sudan by the presidents of Senegal, Nigeria and Gabon. He gave no date for the mission.
Gadio said Senegal’s Abdoulaye Wade, Nigeria’s Olusegun Obasanjo and Omar Bongo of Gabon would try to persuade Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir that international peacekeepers in Darfur would not be a threat to his country.
Khartoum has rejected a U.N. Security Council resolution authorising a U.N. takeover of the cash-strapped African Union peacekeeping mission in conflict-torn Darfur.
Bashir, who is resisting intense international pressure to accept a U.N.-led force, has compared it to a Western invasion and an attempt to recolonise Sudan.
Political and ethnic violence in Darfur has killed more than 200,000 people and forced 2.5 million more to flee their homes since 2003, when mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms accusing the central government of neglecting the west Sudanese region.
“We have a real crisis, perhaps for the first time in history, the United Nations wants to help a country and that country is saying it doesn’t want U.N. troops,” Gadio said.
“And the Darfur tragedy goes on,” he added, speaking to reporters after talks in Dakar with Spain’s foreign minister.
The Senegalese minister said the three African presidents would act as a “committee of wise men” with the task of explaining to Bashir that the continent favoured the deployment of international peacekeepers in Darfur.
“The continent has to clearly explain that Sudan’s sovereignty is not in question, that we will defend Sudan’s territorial integrity along with Sudan itself and that this (U.N. peacekeeping) mission is simply aimed at providing security for the people of Darfur,” Gadio said.
“So, above all, assurances and explanations need to be given (to Sudan),” he added.
The mission is being prepared at a time of growing international fears about the humanitarian situation in Darfur.
The World Food Programme said on Tuesday nearly a quarter of a million people in the region cannot access U.N. food rations because of fighting.
Last week more than 10,000 Darfuris fled renewed fighting in South Darfur, and on Saturday government forces clashed again on the Sudan-Chad border with rebels who did not sign an internationally brokered peace deal in May.
(Reuters)