UN hosts meeting to hasten Darfur peace deal
September 21, 2007 (UNITED NATIONS) — UN chief Ban Ki-moon opened a one-day ministerial meeting here Friday to breathe new life into a joint bid by the United Nations and the African Union (AU) to end civil strife in Sudan’s western Darfur region.
Ban Ki-moon and Alpha Oumar Konare, the head of the AU Commission, were co-chairing the closed-door meeting, which got under way shortly after 3 pm (1900 GMT), with ministers or senior officials of nearly 30 countries or regional bodies taking part.
Ban’s aides said the meeting sought to speed up preparations for the deployment of a 26,000-strong joint AU-UN force to take over peacekeeping from nearly 6,000 under-equipped and underfunded AU troops.
The vanguard of the force, including a 315-member Chinese engineering unit, is expected to arrive in Darfur next month.
Friday’s UN talks, coming four days before world leaders are to attend the annual UN General Assembly session, also aimed to provide political leadership to ensure the success of crunch talks in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, tentatively scheduled for October 27 between the Sudanese government and all Darfur rebels.
But Thursday a major Darfur rebel group called for the Tripoli talks to be delayed, saying a ceasefire must first take hold in the war-ravaged region.
“True confidence-building measures are needed urgently on the ground. The first step should be a total halt to military operations in Darfur,” Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) leader Ahmed Abdel Shafi said, accusing Khartoum of sponsoring “daily crimes” in the region.
And hardline Darfur rebel chief Abdel Wahid Mohammed Nur’s breakaway SLM faction is demanding full deployment of the planned joint AU-UN force in Darfur before it will take part in fresh bargaining with Khartoum.
The Tripoli meeting is to focus on broadening the Darfur peace agreement signed in May 2006 to include those rebel groups which did not sign it.
On the eve of Friday’s UN talks, the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor urged the world to back efforts to arrest two Sudanese officials wanted for alleged war crimes in Darfur.
“Justice in Darfur must be on the agenda (of the meeting),” ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said here, adding that the talks must be an opportunity to remind Sudan’s government of “its responsibility to arrest” war crimes suspect Ahmed Haroun, Sudan’s secretary of state for humanitarian affairs.
Last May, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Haroun and pro-government Janjaweed militia leader Ali Kosheib, who face a list of 42 and 50 charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes respectively. But Sudan has refused to hand them over.
Humanitarian groups also kept the pressure on for the world community to provide security to beleaguered refugees and internally displaced people in Darfur and neighboring eastern Chad, especially women who are the target of rampant sexual violence.
“The people of Darfur have been suffering far too long already. Living in constant fear, they need and deserve security right now,” said Greg Puley, head of the British charity Oxfam International’s New York Office.
In an interview that CNN television aired Thursday, Ban pledged to be “vigilant” in ensuring Sudan complies with Security Council demands to allow humanitarian aid to reach Darfur refugees.
Also on the agenda of Friday’s meeting will be the spillover of the Darfur conflict into neighboring Chad and Central African Republic, which both face a serious humanitarian challenge.
According to UN estimates, more than 200,000 people have died and some two million have been displaced in Darfur as a result of the combined effect of war and famine since the conflict erupted more than four years ago.
Among those present at Friday’s talks were the foreign ministers of Sudan, Congo, Egypt, Gabon, France, Ghana, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia and Senegal as well as US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, British minister of state for Africa Lord Malloch-Brown, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa.
(AFP)