UN chief: Momentum building in Darfur By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer

UN chief: Momentum building in Darfur By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer
26 minutes ago



UNITED NATIONS - Momentum is building in the effort to find a political solution to the violence in Sudan's Darfur region, but until hostilities on the ground cease, the quest to find a political settlement "will not succeed," Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a new report.

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Ban's warning comes on the heels of U.N. approval for a joint African Union-U.N. peacekeeping force in Darfur and as a meeting gets under way this weekend in Arusha, Tanzania, to get Darfur's various splinter rebel factions to agree on an agenda for peace talks.

The AU's envoy to Darfur, Salim Ahmed Salim, told state-owned Tanzania Television the Arusha meeting was necessary because, "the rebels don't have a common strategy on what to negotiate with the government."

Abdel Wahid Nur, who leads a major faction of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement group, told the British Broadcasting Corp. on Friday, however, that his group would boycott the talks because it wants the killings in Darfur to stop before any negotiations begin.

"This is not about another (U.N.) resolution, this is about the implementation of the resolution," Nur told the BBC's "Focus on Africa" program, referring to Tuesday's unanimous U.N. Security Council approval of a 26,000-strong peacekeeping force for Darfur.

Another faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement signed a peace deal with the government in May 2006 and its leader, Minni Minnawi, is now an adviser to Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

Minnawi's faction is the only rebel group that has signed a peace deal with the government since the Darfur conflict began four years ago, when rebels from ethnic African tribes rose up against the Arab-dominated government.

More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million uprooted in the conflict. Sudan's government is accused of unleashing a militia of Arab nomads known as the janjaweed against civilians in the region — a charge it denies.

Ban said in his report given to the Security Council on Friday that the coming months are crucial for Darfur, but that "as long as hostilities continue in Darfur, efforts to reach a political settlement and achieve durable peace will not succeed."

He said successfully deploying the hybrid force "will very much depend on the government's cooperation and assistance, especially with regard to the provision of adequate land, permission to drill for water and the timely clearance of critical mission-support items through customs."

The international community in the next month must also offer the troops and police for the hybrid operation so that the AU-U.N. force can take over as quickly as possible from the underfunded and poorly equipped 7,000-strong AU force currently on the ground in Darfur.

Meanwhile, Ban said he worried about Darfur's "very precarious" situation. Violence and insecurity continue, including Sudanese military bombings of civilian areas, ground attacks against civilian villages, a resurgence of intertribal clashes, and systematic rape.

This year, he said, more than 150,000 people have fled their villages, most seeking refuge in camps for internally displaced people that in many cases are already overcrowded.

Ban said the insecurity has forced humanitarian organizations to curtail some programs, leading to "the deterioration of the living conditions of the millions of conflict-affected people who depend on humanitarian agencies for their survival."

An estimated 566,000 of the 4.2 million conflict-affected persons in Darfur are cut off from humanitarian assistance, he said.

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Associated Press Writer Sukhdev Chhatbar contributed to this report in Dodoma, Tanzania.