Sudan rejects US push, insists AU should remain in Darfur
Oct 19, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir’s adviser said after a meeting with Washington’s top envoy that Khartoum continued to reject the deployment of UN peacekeepers in war-torn Darfur.
“Our position has not changed,” Ghazi Salaheddin told reporters after meeting Andrew Natsios, who is on a mission to Khartoum aimed at winning Sudanese approval for the deployment of UN peacekeepers to replace an African Union force.
“The position to which the government is sticking is that the Darfur peace agreement should be implemented by the African Union (AU),” he added.
Khartoum signed a May peace deal with the largest Darfur rebel group but the other two factions which took part in the talks in Abuja declined to sign, further complicating the work of the AU force.
One of the two factions — the Justice and Equality Movement — reiterated its objections Thursday.
“The (peace deal) does not meet our ambitions and it must be renegotiated,” its leader Khalil Ibrahim told the independent daily Al-Rai al-Am.
“The government must realize that the key to solve the Darfur crisis is self-determination,” he added.
The UN Security Council passed a resolution on August 31 calling for up to 20,000 peacekeepers to be dispatched to Darfur, an area the size of France where the small ill-equipped AU contingent has failed to restore peace.
The newly-appointed Natsios was snubbed by the Sudanese authorities when he arrived in Khartoum last week on his first visit since taking up his post.
Natsios did not talk to the press after his meeting but Salaheddin said that Sudan was willing to consider means of strengthening the cash-strapped AU force.
At least 200,000 people have died as a result of fighting, famine and disease, and more than two million fled their homes since ethnic minority rebels launched an uprising in Darfur in early 2003, drawing a scorched earth response from the military and its Arab militia allies.
The AU itself has said it wants to be relieved by the United Nations and urged Khartoum to accept a UN deployment when its own mandate expires at the end of the year.
(AFP)