US wants UN council to meet at Sudan peace talks
By Irwin Arieff
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 8 (Reuters) – Washington wants the U.N. Security Council to meet next month at the site of peace talks in Kenya between rebels in southern Sudan and Khartoum’s government, U.S. Ambassador John Danforth said on Friday.
Such a meeting would underline how important nailing down a peace deal in southern Sudan is to reaching overall peace across the vast northeast African nation, including in its deeply troubled Darfur region, Danforth told reporters.
“We have at least raised the possibility for council consideration that the Security Council might do something extraordinary, and that is to convene the Security Council at the site of the peace negotiations in Kenya,” Danforth said.
The United States holds the rotating presidency of the 15-nation council in November.
Negotiations on a final peace deal to end the 21-year civil war in southern Sudan opened in Nairobi this week.
Sudanese First Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha and Sudan People’s Liberation Army rebel leader John Garang attended the opening and expressed their commitment to finish the process, begun in Kenya in 2002.
Two earlier attempts this year failed to finalize a peace deal for the southern conflict, in which an estimated 2 million people have been killed mostly through famine and disease since 1983. The SPLA has warned that if the latest talks fail, rebels could rise up in the east and in Darfur as well as the south.
Darfur — where 1.5 million people have been driven from their homes by clashes among rebels, government forces and nomadic Arab Janjaweed militias — is the site of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, according to the United Nations.
The U.S. government says genocide is taking place there.
“There has been general agreement that the answer to Darfur is the north-south process, and that the engagement of John Garang and the government of Sudan are both very important to solve all the problems of Sudan,” Danforth said, referring to the peace talks in the south.
A signed deal for the south would be a model for solving the Darfur problem and other crises in Sudan, Garang said in Nairobi.
Separate talks to end the rebellion that broke out in remote western Darfur in February 2003 collapsed last month and are due to reconvene on Oct. 21.