French FM meets with Sudanese delegation and Bashir emissary
PARIS, Jan 19, 2004 (KUNA) — French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin met on Monday with a delegation from Sudan, including Awad Al-Jaz, Minister for Energy and Mines, and Tijani Fidail, State-Secretary for Foreign Affairs and Emissary for Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir.
The talks focused principally on the situation in the western Darfour region, where rebels have been fighting the central government in Khartoum since 2002.
Peace talks between other factions in the south and the central government have given a glimmer of hope that the decades-old strife in Sudan can be brought under control, although such accords have been tenuous in the past.
Nonetheless, progress has been made on getting agreement on Sudan’s natural resources, mostly 250,000 b/d of oil and the mining interests.
French officials said on Monday that the discussions had centred on the peace process and ways France and Sudan can improve economic cooperation.
The meeting with de Villepin followed closely on the heels of a visit to Sudan January 15-16 by French Junior Minister for Foreign Trade, Francois Loos.
The French government is seeking to reinvigorate economic activity by its companies already installed in Sudan and could also be looking for new avenues to explore, perhaps in the upgrading of oil facilities.
But the United States has also been very active lately in Sudan and has been one of the major brokers of the recent cease-fire.
France has also been a strong backer of the peace talks in Sudan and has had a role in helping Khartoum with the drafting of a new constitution that would encompass all the ethnic groups, the Muslims in the north, the Christian and Animist groups in the south, and other African-based ethnic groupings.
While the powerful and combative Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), which is led by John Garang and has a Christian/Animist power base, has been locked into the peace talks, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Sudan, which is active near the Chad border in Darfour province, is still not satisfied with the peace arrangements and this was part of the Monday’s discussion in Paris.