Nigeria calls meeting on Darfur in Egypt

ABUJA, Feb 3 (AFP) — Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, the current head of the African Union, will chair a meeting on the situation in Sudan’s troubled region of Darfur later this month, a spokesman said Thursday.

“It is an advisory committee on the Darfur situation in Sudan,” presidential spokesman Remi Oyo told a press conference. “The meeting will be attended by Nigeria, as chairman, Libya, Chad, Egypt and Gabon.”

Oyo said Obasanjo had called the meeting in Cairo because “there is no let up in the president’s passion to ensure that there is continued peace and prosperity for Africa.”

Chad, Darfur’s neighbour to the west where many people have fled the fighting in the Sudanese province, called at last weekend’s African Union summit in Abuja for a top-level commission to monitor the situation there.

It also proposed that peace talks between Khartoum and two rebel movements scheduled to resume in mid-February in the Nigerian capital be postponed until the commission reports back.

The vast region of Darfur in western Sudan has faced what UN experts call a major humanitarian crisis, spawned by a February 2003 uprising by black Darfur locals against the Arab government in Khartoum.

A UN panel earlier this week blamed government forces and militia for indiscriminate attacks, including the killing of civilians, torture, enforced disappearances, destruction of villages, rape, pillaging and forced displacement.

However, it stopped short of accusing Khartoum and the militias of genocide against the Darfur population.

Around 70,000 people are estimated to have died in Darfur, many from hunger and disease, while some 1.5 million others have been displaced, many into squalid and dangerous camps.