France hosts meeting to provide help for Darfur
June 24, 2007 (PARIS) — France hosts a meeting of senior officials from more than a dozen countries on Monday aimed at providing funds and other support for international efforts to stabilize Sudan’s violent Darfur region.
Sudan agreed earlier this month to a combined United Nations and African Union peacekeeping force of more than 20,000 troops and police, but many diplomats doubt it will keep its word.
The aim of the force is to stop the violence in Darfur, where international experts estimate 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been expelled from their homes in more than four years of strife. Sudan says 9,000 people have died.
Delegations from the world’s top aid donors, members of the Group of Eight industrialized nations and powerful Sudan ally China are due to discuss the situation in the western province before moving on to ‘international support for the reconstruction of Darfur’, according to the meeting’s agenda.
“It is not a peacemaking meeting. It is, on the contrary, a meeting to support the international efforts that have been deployed,” French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told reporters at a news conference on Sunday.
He said the meeting was aimed at backing the U.N.-AU effort, offering political support to those trying to bring together rebel groups, and providing funds for the planned hybrid force, which will take over from a beleaguered AU contingent of 7,000.
“If there are 20,000 soldiers coming in the hybrid force, whoever they are, they will have to be paid. And the 7,000 who are there now are not being paid, and they are doing nothing because they haven’t received their salaries since January. So if we continue like this, obviously it won’t work,” he said.
France has taken a closer interest in Darfur since President Nicolas Sarkozy took office, pledging more work on human rights.
France’s financial aid to Darfur remains low compared with other European powers. It gave 3.9 million euros ($5.25 million) in 2006, with 2.5 million euros this year, U.N. figures show.
RENEWED PUSH
The Darfur problem dates back to early 2003 when non-Arab rebels took up arms, accusing the government of not heeding their plight in the remote, arid region. Khartoum mobilized Arab militia, known locally as Janjaweed, to quell the revolt.
The Janjaweed embarked on a campaign of killing, pillage and rape. In the past year rebel groups have fought each other and also attacked civilians.
“It is a renewed push in which we can come together and look again at what we need to do,” U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said of the meeting at a joint news conference with Kouchner on Sunday, adding that a greater effort was needed.
Rice said the international community has failed in its responsibility to halt the killings in Darfur.
Rebels in Darfur have split into more than a dozen groups since a peace deal last year signed by only one of three rebel negotiating factions.
A senior U.S. official said he hoped the meeting would help to coordinate efforts among the many nations working on Darfur, to explore France’s idea of a peace-keeping force in eastern Chad and to promote political efforts to settle the conflict.
Monday’s meeting, which will include representatives from Egypt, the United Nations and the World Bank but not the African Union, will likely support an AU-U.N. mediation initiative which hopes to have all factions ready to begin talks around August.
(Reuters)