United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Monday that Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir must accept his proposals to augment the Darfur peacekeeping force, as he sent a new negotiating mission to Khartoum.
“I regret that President Bashir has made numerous and dangerous objections to the proposals I jointly made with the presidency of the African Union,” Ban said in an interview with the Egyptian government daily al-Akhbar.
“I believe that President Bashir and the Sudanese government must accept these proposals providing for the deployment of a joint peacekeeping force involving elements of the AU, backed by an international force,” he was quoted as saying in the Arabic-language paper.
In a recent letter to Ban, Bashir rejected the deployment of about 2Â 300 UN blue helmets as part of a phased creation of a “hybrid” UN-AU force to stabilise the war-torn Darfur region.
“I have decided to once more send my special envoy Jan Eliasson and ask AU envoy Salim Ahmed Salim [to accompany him] to negotiate with the government, he said.
“Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo will soon be heading to Khartoum to discuss the same matter,” Ban said in another interview on Monday with the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat.
In February, Eliasson and Salim went to Sudan and met with Bashir and Darfur rebel leaders.
Efforts to crush the rebellion, which erupted in 2003, have left 200Â 000 dead and more than two million displaced, which an under-equipped 7Â 000-strong AU force deployed in 2004 has been unable to end.
In August, a UN Security Council resolution called for the gradual deployment of a joint UN-AU force of 20Â 000.
The UN Security Council is to hold consultations on Sudan later on Monday. — AFP