UN Nairobi meeting ‘inappropriate’ venue for Darfur rebels: Danforth

NAIROBI, Nov 18 (AFP) — This week’s special gathering in Nairobi of the UN Security Council on Sudan “is not the appropriate place” to meet rebels from Sudan’s western region of Darfur, Council President John Danforth said Thursday.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Danforth briefs the media during a Security Council meeting in Nairobi, November 18, 2004. (Reuters).

Asked at a news conference on the sidelines of the Council meeting about the absence from the proceedings of two rebel groups that rose up in Darfur in February 2003, the US ambassador said, “It’s not Abuja, this is not the appropriate place.”

The Nigerian capital, Abuja, has been the venue for negotiations between these two groups, the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudan Liberation Movement, and the Khartoum government.

The conflict has spawned what the UN terms the world’s worst humanitariann crisis. Tens of thousands of people are estimated to have died since it erupted and some 1.6 million have been displaced.

Officials from the SLM travelled to Nairobi in the hope of attending the Security Council meeting.

Danforth stressed that the Darfur crisis was not being being neglected.

“The resolution we’ll adopt tomorrow is very specific about Darfur,” he said.

“There is no less concern at all about Darfur,” he said.

The US initiative behind the resolution and the Council’s move to Nairobi is based on the idea that by pushing Khartoum and the main rebellion in the south, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, to cap two years of talks with a comprehensive peace deal, other areas of Sudan, including Sudan, will be stabilised.