US envoy to hold talks with Libya on Darfur
March 7, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — The US envoy to Sudan, Andrew Natsios, said he would travel to Tripoli on Wednesday for talks on getting Libya involved in UN and African Union efforts to end the Darfur conflict.
“We believe that it should be one track of negotiations, the one of the UN and AU. I’m leaving tonight to Tripoli to see (Libyan leader Moamer) Kadhafi about the Libyan role,” he said.
“We know there are other tracks organised, and we will urge the regional efforts to merge with the UN,” he added.
Libya has taken a role in seeking to bring an end to the four-year-old conflict in the huge western area of Sudan, which has left an estimated 200,000 people dead and 2.5 million homeless.
On February 21, Kadhafi hosted a summit that brought together Beshir with Eritrean President Issais Afeworki and Chadian President Idriss Deby, along with UN envoy Jan Eliasson and his AU counterpart, Salim Ahmed Salim.
In May last year, Sudan signed a peace accord in Abuja, Nigeria with just one of three existing rebel groups. Since then, the situation has continued to deteriorate, and splinter rebel groups have emerged.
Natsios called for the groups, whose leaders he met in Chad in January, to unify.
“The next step for the rebels is to establish a unified position politically,” he said, adding that the “only way to end the Darfur conflict in a sustainable way is through negotiations.”
He expressed dismay over the slow pace at which steps were being taken to back up the tiny 7,000-man AU contingent, which is short of both money and equipment.
“The process is so slow, and it’s unacceptable from a US perspective, and I think I can speak for the international community,” he said, adding that he had raised the matter with Beshir.
On his most recent mission in December, Natsios failed to convince Beshir to accept the deployment of UN peacekeepers in Darfur.
His visit comes hard on the heels of an unprecedented move by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, which has accused two Sudanese officials of a string of war crimes in Darfur.
Beshir reiterated on Saturday that he would not turn over the two men.
Natsios also visited southern Sudan, where the government and rebels signed a peace deal two years ago to end two decades of civil war, and said steps were needed to speed up application of that accord.
“Without a census and demarcating the border there will be no (general) elections in 2009” as called for under the peace deal.
“The US is tired of delays in all those areas,” he added.
(AFP)