Egypt calls for African-Arab-UN meeting on Darfur

Oct 10, 2006 (CAIRO) — Egypt on Tuesday suggested a special meeting of leaders of the UN Security Council, the Arab League and African Union in a bid to convince Sudan to accept UN troops in war-devastated Darfur, media reported.

“The Darfur question requires Arab mobilization and building bridges between Arabs and Africans on one hand, and international involvement on the other,” said Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit in the state-run Al-Ahram daily.

“This could come about through a meeting in New York between the secretary general of the Arab League (Amr Mussa), the president of the African Union commission (Alpha Omar Konareh) and the president of the Security Council,” said Abul Gheit.

The Security Council president is a rotating assignment, which is held in October by Ambassador Kenzo Oshima of Japan.

“This would be a Security Council meeting aimed at clearing up the directing lines of the application of certain elements of Resolution 1706” which called for the deployment of UN troops in Darfur.

“The meeting must also focus on what kind of assurances can be given so that Sudan understands that there is no kind of plot against it,” added Abul Gheit, in reference to Khartoum’s repeated refusal to allow UN troops into Darfur.

“The international community is mobilizing (around Darfur) and it is up to us to ease the tension so as not to find ourselves facing a confrontation between Sudan and the international community… which would have consequences for us in Egypt,” he said.

The Sudanese government has come under mounting pressure to agree to the deployment of up to 20,000 UN peacekeepers as mandated by Resolution 1706 to replace weak, underfunded African Union (AU) troops, but President Omar al-Beshir has repeatedly rejected any such deployment.

(ST/AFP)