UNSC expresses support to work of AU panel on Darfur

December 21, 2009 (WASHINGTON) – The UN Security Council today (UNSC) welcomed the report compiled by the African Union High Level Panel on Darfur (AUPD) that contains a roadmap for resolving the crisis in Sudan’s Western region.

The ambassador of Burkina Faso Michel Kafando, who holds the UNSC rotating presidency, said that the council “looked forward to the implementation of a holistic approach to the problems facing Sudan”.

Kafando said that the UNSC “agreed with the report that the causes and consequences of the conflict in Darfur have yet to be addressed”.

The AUPD former chairman Thabo Mbeki addressed the UNSC along with the Chairperson of African Union Commission Jean Ping on the findings of the commission and their plans for implementing the recommendations.

Mbeki emphasized the need to resolve the Darfur crisis well before the April 2010 elections to enable Darfuris to take part in the polls.

“We were concerned that should the people of Darfur feel excluded in any way from both the elections and consideration of matters relating to the referendum, this would serve to underline their marginalization and disempowerment, which were a central cause of the armed uprising which started in 2003,” he said.

“For this reason, we thought it was important that the Darfur negotiations should be concluded before the impending general elections,” Mbeki added.

The former South African president reiterated the root cause of the conflict in Darfur and Sudan being the “concentration of power and wealth in the hands of a Khartoum-centered elite and the consequent marginalization of the so-called periphery, including Darfur”.

It was, therefore, necessary to restructure the country, he said, pledging that the Implementation Panel would work closely with the people to build what had been described as “the New Sudan”. While the planned 2011 referendum in South Sudan could result in secession by the South, , he noted, historical power relations in the North could still remain, making democratization there critical.

Furthermore he said that the panel recommendations enjoyed broad support among the people of Sudan as highlighted during his recent visit.

The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in his speech before the UNSC described the Panel’s report as a revealing assessment that looked at the Sudan in its totality.

Ban also lent his support to the joint UN-AU mediator Dijibril Bassole in his efforts to bring the Darfur warring parties together.

“By giving Mr. Bassole our unequivocal support, we will send a strong message to all parties that they must engage in the negotiations he is leading” he said.

The same message was relayed during the UNSC closed session held afterwards by the UK delegation which emphasized that Mbeki’s work on Darfur and North-South dossier should not undermine the work by UN missions and its political figures, according to a UN diplomat who attended the closed meeting.

An African diplomat speaking to Sudan Tribune last month said that the AU is seeking to have Mbeki take over from the joint United Nations (UN) – African Union (AU) Darfur mediator Dijibril Bassole.

The AU particularly Chairperson of African Union Commission Jean Ping as well as Mbeki view Bassole as being “closer” to the UNSC, the diplomat said while the joint mediator “is trying to be impartial in his role without favoring the Sudanese government”.

The UN diplomat said that the Libyan envoy who received a paper note from his Sudanese peer blasted the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant for the Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir last March saying it sabotaged the peace efforts.

The issue of the ICC was not brought up by other UNSC members but the UN chief did mention that their needs to be compliance with resolution 1593 referring the Darfur case to the Hague based court.

Mbeki’s report made an implicit endorsement of the ICC prosecutions saying that it can only prosecute few cases leaving an impunity gap that must be handled by a hybrid criminal court containing Sudanese and foreign judges.

The Sudanese government has rejected the proposal saying it violated its constitution and the independent of its judiciary.

The Libyan delegation said that the donors should fulfill their obligations to the East African nation saying that development is the only way to quell the political unrest and crisis.

His Russian counterpart reminded the UNSC of the decision taken to punish any party in the Darfur conflict that is obstructing peace efforts naming the Darfur Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) led by Abdel-Wahid Mohamed Al-Nur who resides in Paris as candidates for sanctions.

Moscow have recently moved to cement political and economic ties with Khartoum and most recently Russian special envoy Mikhail Margelov to Sudan said his country does not see an alternative to Bashir to run in the April 2010 presidential elections.

(ST)