UN Security Council to send delegation to Darfur: minister

KHARTOUM, Oct 9 (AFP) — The UN Security Council is to send a delegation to Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region to witness the crisis there first hand, Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail said Saturday.

“Such a visit will be appropriate so long as the Security Council is concerned with the situation in Darfur,” said Ismail after a meeting here with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s envoy to Sudan, Jan Pronk.

He did not say when he expected the visit, except that he was informed about it during his trip to New York last month for the annual UN General Assembly opening.

Ismail added that his government was eager to host the team so that members see for themselves efforts being exerted by the government to address the problem in the region.

Some 50,000 people have died in the 20-month conflict between the government and ethnic minority rebels, an estimated 1.4 million displaced from their homes and a further 200,000 forced to flee to Chad.

The Security Council passed a resolution in September threatening sanctions against Sudan’s vital oil industry, saying the government had failed to rein in pro-government Arab Janjaweed militias, blamed for many atrocities in the region.

Ismail said he had also discussed with the UN envoy the government’s next move as it goes about implementing the resolution and agreed to convene a meeting next week of the Joint Implementation Mechanism.

The JIM, a committee comprising Sudanese and UN officials, was set up in July to follow up on pledges the government made to UN chief Annan on stabilizing humanitarian and security conditions in Darfur.

Its mandate has since be broadened to include monitoring Sudan’s compliance with two Security Council resolutions on the Darfur crisis.

Pronk was due to fly Sunday to Nairobi, where rebels of the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement and the government are hammering out details of a peace agreement aimed at ending the 21-year civil war in the south.

The international community has been pushing both sides to expedite the process, saying it could be used as a model to resolve the conflict in western Sudan.

Meanwhile, a delegation of the European Union was expected to arrive in Khartoum Wednesday for talks with Sudanese leaders expected to be dominated by the situation in Darfur and the talks in Kenya.