Egypt dismisses UN request to press Sudan

March 24, 2007 (CAIRO) — U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon failed on Saturday to persuade the Egyptian president to push neighboring Sudan’s leader to accept a U.N. peacekeeping mission in his war-torn Darfur region.

Ban, who is on a Mideast tour, said after an early morning meeting with President Hosni Mubarak that he had asked the Egyptian leader to exercise influence on Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to accept the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur.

Al-Bashir had earlier this month scuttled such a U.N. plan, rejecting its key points in a letter to Ban.

According to comments by Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, Mubarak did not comply with the request to pressure his neighbor.

“Talking about exercising pressure will not lead to a solution to the problem,” said Aboul Gheit. “We must first widen the political process and persuade all the parties involved (in the Darfur crisis) … Then, we will have the chance to reach a settlement.”

Aboul Gheit suggested the way forward was to initiate talks between al-Bashir’s government and the rebels who were not part of last year’s peace agreement signed in Abuja, Nigeria, by the Sudanese government and one rebel group. The accord failed later to bring other rebel factions on board.

“Without getting them together in one agreement, any talks over international forces cannot be crystalized,” Aboul Gheit said.

United Nations has failed to force Sudan to accept the deployment of a “hybrid” 22,000 -strong U.N. and African Union troops force. Egypt already has a small military force with the AU in Darfur.

More than 200,000 people have been killed and over 2 million displaced since fighting began in this western Sudanese region in 2003, when rebels from ethnic African tribes rose up against the central government.

Khartoum is accused of having responded with indiscriminate killings by unleashing the janjaweed militias of Arab nomads _ blamed for the worst atrocities in Darfur _ in a conflict that the White House and others have labeled genocide. The government denies these charges.

Al-Bashir reneged on a November agreement to accept the U.N-AU force and claimed last month that U.N. troops were not required because the 7,000-strong African Union force on the ground in Darfur can maintain order.

In Cairo, Ban also asked Arab League’s Secretary-General Amr Moussa to push for a solutions for the Darfur crisis.

(AP)