Sudan on Monday rebuffed a French initiative to host a meeting of key nations to find a solution to Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region on June 25, saying the timing was not right.
Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol said his country preferred to await the outcome of African Union and United Nations efforts to get peace talks back on track and put together a peacekeeping force for Darfur.
”At this particular time when we are … waiting for the roadmap … to be announced we don’t want any distraction,” Akol told reporters after meeting French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner in Khartoum.
”We think that … the time may not be opportune for that meeting,” Akol added.
Akol said all initiatives being proposed to resolve Darfur needed to be streamlined under the AU and the UN
A joint AU-UN effort to renew peace talks and provide an effective peacekeeping force has largely been recognised by all parties to the conflict as the best way forward.
Since French President Nicolas Sarkozy took office, France has taken a more proactive stance towards Darfur, which borders its former colony, Chad.
Sarkozy announced last week that foreign ministers from an ”enlarged contact group”, including the United States, Egypt and Sudan’s ally, China, would meet in Paris on June 25 to seek a way to end to the Darfur crisis.
Aid operation
Darfur’s aid operation, the world’s largest, will need $650-million this year and the 7 000-strong AU peacekeeping force costs $40-million a month to sustain.
”Interest is not only money,” said Kouchner, declining to say whether France would increase its aid to Darfur.
Washington calls the violence genocide, a term European governments are reluctant to use and Khartoum rejects. International experts estimate 200 000 have died in Darfur, while Sudan puts the figure at 9 000.
The UN, AU and the Sudanese government were meeting in Ethiopia on Monday to thrash out details of a hybrid force to help restore security in Darfur, where 2,5-million have been driven from their homes in more than four years of fighting.
Differences over the command and control of the force have emerged between the participants at the talks.
”The command and control structures are to be provided by the United Nations,” said Akol. ”The structures and the system, but not necessarily the personnel,” he added.
The force will be headed by a Nigerian commander.
He said the details being discussed in Addis Ababa included the mandate, a timetable for deployment, exactly how many personnel would be needed and what equipment they would need.
Akol urged the UN Security Council to resolve to fund the force and get it quickly in place once the details were agreed.
”And we hope that the [UN] system will expedite rapid deployment of that force so that the situation in Darfur will be brought back to normal as quickly as possible,” he said.
Mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in early 2003, accusing Khartoum of neglecting the arid region. Khartoum mobilised militias, known locally as Janjaweed, to quell the revolt.
The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for a junior government minister and a militia leader accused of colluding to commit war crimes. — Reuters