France wants to bring China, US in talks on Darfur

May 21, 2007 (PARIS) — France’s new Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner is seeking to bring China, the United States and other countries together for talks on the crisis in Sudan’s Darfur region, an aid organisation said Monday.

Kouchner, who was appointed on Friday, wants to set up a contact group of nations concerned by the violence in Darfur that the United Nations says has left 200,000 dead and two million displaced since 2003.

“The goal for the coming weeks is to set up a contact group in which there would not only be Americans, British, Germans, Canadians, Chinese and Russians but also the neighbouring countries, including Eritrea and Egypt,” said Jacky Mamou, president of the Urgence Darfour non-governmental organisation.

Mamou on Saturday attended a meeting of experts and diplomats called by Kouchner to come up with a strategy for addressing the Darfur crisis.

The new foreign minister hopes to press for action on Darfur at next month’s Group of Eight summit in Germany and the European summit in Brussels.

The United States is calling for sanctions to punish Khartoum but has run into opposition from China, the leading customer for Sudanese oil and a key supplier of military arms and equipment to Sudan.

On Sunday, the Sudanese government renewed its opposition to the deployment of UN peacekeepers after talks in Khartoum with China’s newly appointed special envoy on Darfur, Liu Guijin.

President Nicolas Sarkozy had said the bloodshed in Darfur is “unacceptable” and called during his campaign for action to halt the violence.

France and the United States have joined other world powers in pushing for the deployment of a UN force in Darfur, where ethnic African tribes are rebelling against the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum.

Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir is accused of supporting the Janjaweed militia whose leader Ali Kosheib stands accused by the International Criminal Court of committing atrocities.

(AFP)