UN’s Ban “extremely disappointed” over Darfur
April 16, 2008 (UNITED NATIONS) — U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed extreme disappointment in a report made public on Wednesday at a lack of progress in resolving the conflict in Darfur, blaming both sides for showing no political will.
In his latest report on efforts to deploy a U.N./African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur, Ban said both the Sudanese government and rebel groups had failed to stop fighting, cooperate with the peacekeepers or prepare for peace talks.
“The parties appear determined to pursue a military solution; the political process stalled; the deployment of UNAMID (the peacekeeping force) is progressing very slowly … and the humanitarian situation is not improving,” he said.
“The primary obstacle is the lack of political will among all the parties to pursue a peaceful solution to the Darfur crisis,” Ban said. “I am extremely disappointed at the lack of progress on all fronts.”
The U.N. chief’s bleak report covered the three months after UNAMID took over on January 1 from an ineffectual purely AU force to try to halt the five-year-old Darfur conflict, which involves government troops, allied militias and rebel groups.
The U.N. peacekeeping force is intended eventually to number 26,000 troops and police, but by March 26 only 9,200 were in place. There are disputes between the United Nations and Sudan’s government over which countries can contribute forces and what the operating rules will be.
Peace talks opened in Libya last October in the absence of several key rebel groups and soon adjourned with little achieved.
“The use of military force by the parties has overshadowed the political process and created an environment in which the prospect of negotiations has become ever more remote,” Ban’s report said.
Although the Sudanese government said it wanted a political solution, its recent military actions against rebels in Western Darfur were “fundamentally at odds” with creating the right climate, it said.
The operations had led to indiscriminate killings and other serious human rights abuses, it added, while also blaming rebels for illegal detention and torture of civilians.
International experts say more than 200,000 people have been killed and over 2 million have been driven from their homes by the Darfur conflict. Khartoum says those figures are exaggerated and has put the death toll at 9,000.
The issuing of Ban’s report for the Security Council coincided with a summit between council nations and African states, where Sudan’s delegate pinned the blame for the deadlock over Darfur squarely on the rebels.
“The ball remains in the court of the Security Council as well as the AU … to undertake the effort to convince the rebels to heed reason and not the sound of guns,” said Mustafa Osman, an adviser to Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.
(Reuters)