United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan opened high-level talks in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Thursday with senior African Union officials to seek solutions to the crisis in Sudan’s troubled western Darfur region.
But prospects for the meeting reaching consensus on a way forward, particularly on the key question of transferring the cash-strapped AU mission in Darfur to the United Nations, remained unclear.
Sudan is vehemently opposed to a UN role despite an AU endorsement of the transfer that the pan-African body itself requested. Efforts to convince Khartoum to ease its stance have thus far yielded no success.
A day after saying in neighbouring Kenya that he still hopes to send UN peacekeepers to Darfur, Annan was meeting in Ethiopia with AU Commission chief Alpha Oumar Konare and AU Peace and Security Council chief Said Djinnit.
Also attending were Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol, representatives from Gabon and Congo, the current AU chair, and the Arab League, officials said.
One AU official predicted the talks would not produce significant results in addressing the escalating unrest in Darfur that has raged for more than three years, mainly because Annan will leave his post at year’s end.
”This meeting may not yield much,” the official, who is close to Konare, said on condition of anonymity. ”Everyone is holding to their position and knows that Kofi Annan is on his way out.”
A UN official said Sudan has already made contact with Ban Ki-moon, the South Korean Foreign Minister who will replace Annan as the head of the world body on January 1 next year.
Sudan says handing the AU mission to the UN threatens its sovereignty and risks worsening the situation in Darfur where at least 200 000 people have been killed and about 2,5-million others displaced by the war.
It instead favours a reinforced and expanded AU mission, the mandate for which was to have expired on September 30 but has since been extended to the end of the year.
The AU has announced plans to boost the mission from the current 7 000 to 11 000 but has been unable to move the additional personnel in due to funding woes and lack of transportation assets.
On Monday, the UN under-secretary general for peacekeeping Hedi Annabi announced the world body would give the AU $77-million to bolster its Darfur mission.
The war in Darfur erupted in February 2003 when rebels from minority tribes took up arms to demand an equal share of national resources, prompting a heavy-handed crackdown from the government forces and proxy militia called Janjaweed. — Sapa-AFP