ETHIOPIA: Diplomacy takes centre stage as Africa Union and European Commission meets in Ethiopia over Darfur

The African Union will not abandon Darfur but it needs more international support if it is to continue its peacekeeping mission, the AU commission chairman said in a meeting with European Union leaders on Monday (October 02). An under-funded and ill-equipped 7,000 strong AU force has so far failed to put an end to the violence that has killed an estimated 200,000 and forced 2.5 million from their homes in there years of fighting. The U.N. Security Council has passed a resolution to send 20,000 U.N. troops to Darfur to take over from AU forces. But Khartoum has repeatedly rejected the plan. Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has accused the West of trying to recolonise his oil-producing country. The chairmen of both the AU Commission and the European Commission vowed to work with the government of Sudan to find an acceptable formula for maintaining troops in Darfur. "We want to avoid the Rwanda syndrome where the international community goes out and does not fulfil its responsibility," said European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, referring to the 1994 genocide. Only one of three rebel factions signed an AU-negotiated peace deal with the Sudanese government in May. Since then, violence has increased as rebel groups fracture and all sides try to make territorial gains ahead of any international intervention to end the conflict. Talks in Addis Ababa followed a 24-hour visit by the EU group to Sudan to try to break the impasse over peacekeepers. Western powers insist Khartoum must reconsider its objections to international troops. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the choice for Khartoum was between "cooperation and confrontation". Konare and Michel said they still supported a transfer to the United Nations but admitted that could not happen as long as Khartoum rejected the plan. They stressed that the international community needed to reassure the Sudanese government that there was no hidden agenda, and that one way to do so was to put more pressure on rebels who had not signed the Darfur peace agreement. The EU is the biggest contributor to the AU mission in Darfur, giving 242 million euro ($307 million) since it was launched.

ITN Source | October 3, 2006

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