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/ 26 October 2004
A second day of peace talks on the crisis in Sudan’s Darfur region broke off early on Tuesday, with rebels refusing face-to-face talks with the government until the African Union meets separately with both sides to draft an agenda. Delegates said the AU-brokered talks in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, will resume on Wednesday.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-Africa&ao=124429">UN Security Council to meet in Africa</a>
A senior Sudanese official has rejected any immediate wider role for African Union troops in its troubled Darfur region, saying security in the western region was the responsibility of Sudanese forces. Sudan’s Agriculture Minister Majzoub al-Khalifa Ahmad on Monday dismissed a proposal by the African Union to send nearly 2 000 peacekeepers to the area.
A people without hope in Sudan
Millions of dollars in smuggled Central African diamonds are being routed through Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates to evade intensifying controls at the world’s main diamond market, say investigators trying to curb trade in conflict diamonds. The investigators have called for ”urgent corrective action” by the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Automatic-weapon fire and grenade launchers resounded throughout a major northern Côte d’Ivoire city on Sunday evening, in what a military source said was an outbreak of fighting between rival rebel groups. ”It seems there are two rebel factions who have been fighting each other over the last few hours,” said a military official.
Exiled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide issued a statement on Sunday saying he was ”well looked after” by his hosts and would personally address reporters at an unspecified ”opportune time”. When reporters asked Mildred Aristide if her husband was healthy, she nodded. Asked if the couple were prisoners, she sighed.