US’s Zoellick meets Sudan’s Garang to encourage peace

By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent

RUMBEK, Sudan, April 15 (Reuters) – U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick met the leader of Sudan’s former southern rebels on the second day of a diplomatic mission to press for peace efforts in Sudan and an end to the crisis in Darfur.

US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick.(AFP).

Zoellick, the number two state department official, landed on a dirt runway in the main stronghold of the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), where he was greeted by several hundred people and a brass band.

He immediately began talks with John Garang, who signed a peace deal in January with the Khartoum government to end two decades of civil war.

Zoellick aims to press Garang for quick moves to implement the peace deal — as he had when he met government officials on Thursday.

Under January’s North-South agreement, Khartoum and the SPLM will set up a coalition government, decentralise power, share oil revenues and form joint military units.

Zoellick was to visit Darfur later as part of an intensifying U.S. diplomatic effort to halt starvation and armed conflict that are threatening the lives of millions of people in the arid western Sudanese region.

Darfuri civic leaders who met Zoellick in Khartoum on Thursday described a dire situation in their home province.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the fighting in Darfur and more than 2 million have fled their homes to makeshift camps.

“All Darfur is a (prison) camp because there is insecurity, starvation,” said Mahmoud Mustafa el-Mekki, a senior tribal official.

Madibbo Adam Madibbo, foreign affairs secretary of the Umma Party, Sudan’s largest opposition party, said the government could rein in militias blamed for atrocities in Darfur “but are not willing”.

After flying from Khartoum to Darfur, Zoellick was scheduled to tour Abu Shouk camp near El Fasher after briefings by aid organisations.

When former Secretary of State Colin Powell visited the camp last year its population was roughly 40,000. Now the figure is twice that.

HUMANITARIAN NEEDS

“I think that there’s a possibility of again strengthening the security conditions in Darfur, but I’m focused very heavily now on meeting the near-term humanitarian needs as we approach the rainy season,” Zoellick said after talks with government and other officials on Thursday.

There was a pressing need to get more food into the camps and Sudanese officials had agreed to speed up visas for aid workers trying to cope with the crisis.

Zoellick said Sudan may not have total control over militias behind the atrocities in Darfur but must do more to stop the violence. He urged support for an expanded African Union (AU) monitoring force in the troubled region.

“Where the government doesn’t feel it can act, then we need to be able to support the AU to be able to act,” he added.

Zoellick has urged support for expanding the AU forces from 2,000 to 7,500 troops and has worked to have NATO or some of its member states help with vital services like transport.

The Darfur crisis was triggered in February 2003 when two rebel groups took up arms against the government, complaining of neglect and discrimination.