SUDAN: U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrives in Sudan

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrives in Sudan to lay the groundwork for a solution to the Darfur conflict through talks and deployment of thousands of peacekeepers. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Sudan on Monday (September 3) to press for a quick deployment of a 26,000-strong peacekeeping force in Darfur and quick start new peace talks to end the four-year regional conflict. Ban, who was greeted in Khartoum by Sudanese Deputy Foreign Minister Mohamed Ali Karti, plans to spend a day in Darfur and hold talks with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. Reaching that goal will be difficult because Darfur is a vast and complex region where peace agreements and cease-fires have been ignored, lawlessness has increased, and more than a dozen rebel groups and government forces are still fighting. The U.N. secretary-General said he chose this time to make the week-long trip which also will include stops in Chad and Libya because of the "historic opportunity" provided by the U.N. Security Council's adoption of a resolution on July 31. It authorises a 26,000-strong joint force from the African Union and the United Nations to replace the beleaguered 7,000-strong A.U. mission now in Darfur by December 31. The resolution was adopted after months of delay in getting agreement from the Sudanese government, and Ban said he wants to test the government's commitment to speedy deployment of the "hybrid" A.U.-U.N. force. Since taking the reins of the United Nations on January 1, he has made Darfur a priority, working behind the scenes to help win approval for the hybrid force and trying to revive negotiations among the warring parties. During his trip, Ban also plans to visit Juba in southern Sudan, where a separate 10,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force is monitoring a fragile January 2005 peace accord that ended more than two decades of civil war between Sudan's Muslim government in the north and the mostly Christian southern rebels.

ITN Source | September 4, 2007

Tags:. .security. .scenes. .provided. .behind. .press