US Negroponte in Libya for talks on Darfur

April 17, 2007 (TRIPOLI) — US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte arrived on Tuesday in Tripoli, the first visit by such a high-ranking Washington official to the former pariah state in over 50 years, an AFP reporter said.

Negroponte, on a four-nation African tour focused on trying to resolve the crisis in Sudan’s western Darfur region, is to hold talks Wednesday with Libya’s pointman for Africa, Abdel Salam Triki, the US embassy here said.

Triki, assistant foreign minister for African affairs, last week shuttled between N’Djamena and Khartoum mediating between Chad and Sudan after deadly border clashes between their troops.

The Libyan government has tried to mediate between the two countries in recent months by posting Libyan monitors on the border and calling on both Chad and Sudan to respect agreements signed in Tripoli in 2006.

But the two countries routinely trade accusations, with Chad complaining that Sudanese raid villages near the border and Sudan accusing Chad of violating international agreements.

Negroponte flew in to the Libyan capital from Chad, where he paid a brief visit following a five-day stay in Sudan during which he pushed Khartoum to accept the deployment of a robust UN-African Union peacekeeping force to stem violence that has steadily escalated since the Darfur conflict erupted in 2003.

The State Department had said Negroponte would during his trip, that will also take him to Mauritania, rally support from Sudan’s neighbours to help end the conflict.

Sudan on Monday accepted the second phase of a UN plan to bring stability to Darfur that will add 3,000 UN troops to an under-manned African Union force in the war-torn region.

The three-phase plan floated last year by former UN chief Kofi Annan is supposed to culminate with the deployment of UN peacekeepers to bolster the embattled African force in Darfur, a region the size of France.

Negroponte while in Sudan warned Khartoum that it faced isolation if it didn’t accept all phases of the plan.

Washington’s number two diplomat is the first high-ranking US official to visit Libya since then Secretary of State John Dulles held talks with Libyan officials in Tripoli in 1953.

Relations between Libya and the United States were severed in 1981 but restored in May 2006 after Washington removed the north African state from its list of countries that support terrorism.

Some 200,000 people have been killed and more than two million driven from their homes in Darfur, according to the United Nations, which has reported widespread human rights abuses in the region.

(AFP)