Annan asks Sudan’s president to negotiate Darfur settlement

UNITED NATIONS, May 13, 2004 (AP) — Secretary-General Kofi Annan asked Sudan ‘s president to negotiate a settlement to the crisis in his country’s western Darfur region where thousands of people are believed to have died since 2003, a U.N. spokesman said Thursday.

Annan’s letter to President Omar el-Bashir urged the Sudanese leader to maintain a cease-fire in place since April and facilitate the early deployment of African Union observers throughout Darfur, said associate spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

The letter, sent Wednesday, wasn’t made public. But Dujarric said it asked el-Bashir to follow up on concerns raised at a U.N. Security Council meeting last Friday by the acting U.N. human rights chief, Bertrand Ramcharan, and the head of the U.N. World Food Program, James Morris, who recently returned from a visit to Darfur.

It proposed disarming militias and allowing humanitarian workers to quickly help hundreds of thousands of people who have fled the fighting.

Thousands of people are believed to have died since early 2003 when rebels took up arms to fight for autonomy and greater state aid in the neglected province. The conflict also displaced about 900,000 refugees in Darfur’s three states. Another 100,000 have fled into neighboring Chad.