The United Nations is optimistic Sudan will stick to an accord on a United Nations-African Union force for troubled Darfur, a UN spokesperson said on Wednesday, but some diplomats feared Khartoum had set conditions. After months of negotiations, Sudan accepted on Tuesday a joint UN-AU peacekeeping force.
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 get peace talks back on track.
All sides in the conflict in Darfur are ready to start talks to renegotiate a year-old peace accord rejected by many Darfuris as inadequate, the top United Nations humanitarian chief in Sudan said on Friday. In his last interview before leaving his post after three years, Manuel Aranda da Silva said a descent into anarchy in Darfur is hindering the world’s largest aid operation.
Smooth marble floors and elegant wooden furniture adorn the entrance halls of Khartoum’s brand new luxury hotels, promising weary visitors a fresh welcome to the country emerging from years of civil war. After a north-south peace deal in January 2005 ended Africa’s longest civil war, investors cautiously began to visit bringing promises of cash, development and services.
Washington issued a damning human rights report on Sudan, saying genocide in Darfur continued and blaming both government and rebel forces for attacks in the remote region. It said there was widespread impunity for crimes including torture and that thousands more people had been killed by government forces.
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/ 13 February 2007
Government forces have attacked Darfur rebel positions ahead of a critical meeting between rebel leaders and African Union and United Nations envoys trying to revive a stalled peace process, rebels said on Tuesday. ”There was an attack from the Janjaweed and government of Sudan,” said Osman al-Bushra, a rebel commander in Darfur.
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/ 12 February 2007
Sudan will not allow a United Nations human rights team to visit unless they replace a member of the delegation who Khartoum says is biased, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on Monday. A six-member UN rights team was due to arrive this week in Sudan to investigate alleged abuses in Darfur. But the government has said they will not get visas.
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/ 3 February 2007
Chinese President Hu Jintao told Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on Friday that Khartoum had to resolve the four-year-old conflict in Darfur. Hu urged al-Bashir in a face-to-face meeting to boost the United Nations’s ”constructive role in realising peace in Darfur” along with the African Union.
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/ 29 January 2007
Sudan lost the leadership of the African Union for a second time after the pan-African group on Monday awarded the rotating chair to Ghana because of widespread outrage over continuing bloodshed in Darfur. Alpha Oumar Konare, the AU’s top diplomat, told reporters Ghanaian President John Kufuor would become chairperson. ”By consensus it is President Kufuor.”
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/ 26 January 2007
A diplomatic deadlock is expected at a meeting of African leaders in Ethiopia over whether Sudan, accused of war crimes in its Darfur region, will become the African Union (AU) chair as promised a year ago. With around 7 000 AU troops struggling to stem the violence in remote Darfur and AU mediation of peace talks, hosts Sudan were denied the chairmanship.