Sudan would welcome UN peace monitors, not forces

KHARTOUM, March 17 (Reuters) – Sudan would welcome U.N. teams to monitor the implementation of any peace deal in the south but does not want the presence of armed forces, Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said on Wednesday.

Sudan’s government is negotiating a peace deal with the southern-based Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) to end Africa’s longest civil war, a 20-year conflict that has left two million people dead in the oil-producing state.

“We welcome the presence of a United Nations mission in Sudan after the signing of a peace agreement,” the foreign minister said after meeting the U.N. secretary-general’s special adviser on Africa, Mohamed Sahnoun, in Khartoum.

But Ismail said any U.N. presence should be under chapter six of the U.N. charter, which deals with the peaceful settlement of conflicts, not chapter seven, which outlines conditions for using armed forces to settle disputes.

“The peace agreement that the government and the SPLM are seeking to achieve is based on negotiations. So what is required here is a monitoring of its implementation not imposing peace, as it would be under chapter seven,” he told reporters.

Sahnoun told Reuters he had met Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir to discuss the role of the United Nations once a peace deal had been reached, as well as plans for U.N. assistance in reconstruction and to help the return of an estimated three to four million people displaced by the war.

Talks between the government and SPLM are ongoing in Kenya. Mediators said the two sides had agreed to extend the talks that had been due to end on Tuesday for a few more days to tackle issues of power sharing and the status of three disputed areas.

Of the Kenya talks, Sahnoun said: “We felt there was a lot of goodwill and trust. It’s more noticeable in Naivasha than at any time before. I don’t want to sound over optimistic but I am encouraged. I did not see any animosity.”

Delegates have said progress in the latest round of talks that began on February 17 had been slow, and had stuck on the status of the oil-rich Abyei region.

Rebels from the largely animist and Christian south have fought for greater autonomy from the Islamist government in the Arabic-speaking north since 1983. Disputes over oil, ethnicity and ideology have complicated the conflict.