US envoy arrives in Sudan for talks on Darfur
Mar 2, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — The U.S. envoy for the Sudan, Andrew Natsios, arrived here Friday for talks on the Darfur crisis, which a government official has described as the major source of Sudan’s political problems.
Sudan’s leadership is facing pressure on three fronts over Darfur : the International Criminal Court which this week accused a junior Cabinet minister of war crimes, the U.N. Security Council which is pushing to deploy U.N. peacekeepers in the war-wracked region of western Sudan, and from within the government as the junior partner in the coalition supports the U.N. deployment.
Natsios made no statement on arrival in Khartoum on Friday night, but the official Sudan News Agency said he would meet senior government officials and visit Darfur as well as Juba, the southern capital, during his seven-day trip.
Tension has become public in recent weeks between the National Congress Party of President Omar al-Bashir and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, the ruling party in southern Sudan and the junior partner in the national unity government.
SPLM leader Salva Kiir Mayardit supports the U.N. Security Council plan to deploy about 22,000 U.N. and African Union troops in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million people have been displaced in four years of fighting.
President al-Bashir has refused to allow their deployment, saying all that is needed is for the U.N. to give technical and financial support to the existing African Union force of 7,000 troops.
In addition, Kiir said in January that the 2005 peace treaty, which ended a 21-year civil war between the north and the south, is not working. He blamed the government for failing to stop clashes between pro-government forces and SPLM fighters in which more than 130 people were killed in November.
On Thursday night, leading members of the National Congress and the SPLM held discussions in Khartoum. Afterward, the deputy leader of the congress, Nafie Ali Nafie, issued a statement saying the two sides had agreed to “pool their efforts for a comprehensive resolution of the Darfur question and to achieve peace and stability all over the country.”
“The two parties have decided to find a just and peaceful solution to the Darfur problem because it is the cause of all the other problems,” the official Sudan News Agency quoted Nafie as saying. Nafie is also an assistant to President al-Bashir.
The secretary general of the SPLM, Pagan Amum, said his group had specific proposals to resolve the Darfur conflict and would be discussing these with the congress in the coming days, according to a report by the state-run Sudan Media Center.
Amum was quoted as saying that Thursday’s meeting had also reviewed “the accusations leveled by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court,” where again his party had proffered some proposals.
The ICC prosecutor accused a minister of state and a member of the security forces of a combined 51 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for their actions in Darfur. Sudan’s government has rejected the allegations and said it would not hand over the two men for trial.
The Darfur conflict began in February 2003 when ethnic African tribesmen took up arms against what they saw as decades of neglect and discrimination by the Arab government in Khartoum. The government responded with a counter-insurgency in which Arab militias committed widespread rape, looting and killing.
(AP)