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British PM Brown offers to stage Darfur peace talks

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has offered to hold Darfur peace talks in the British capital.

His office declined to provide details or explain why the prime minister was making the formal offer now to use London as venue for talks to bring peace to Darfur, where fighting between the Sudanese government and a badly splintered rebel movement has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and pushed millions from their homes.

“This is a formal offer to hold these talks in London,” a spokesman said late on Saturday, speaking anonymously in line with office policy.

He declined to go into any detail or explain why the prime minister was making the offer now.

But news of the proposal was timed to coincide with Global Day for Darfur yesterday, which marks the fifth anniversary of the conflict in the Sudanese province.

Lawmakers, actors, authors and activists are marking the day with protests, grim advertisements and the delivery of a series of disturbing children’s drawings depicting the conflict to Brown’s official residence.

Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling and fellow authors of children’s books have signed an open letter calling for more support for children affected by the bloodshed.

“It is time to change the narrative,” the letter reads. “It is time to tell a different story. This April many children in Darfur will be reaching their fifth birthdays without ever having known peace. The world needs to wake up.”

Actors Matt Damon and Thandie Newton are participating in a television ad campaign, which shows them cutting and shattering toys in an effort to highlight the suffering of children in the country.

Yesterday a delegation of young survivors of the conflict were due to deliver to Brown’s 10 Downing Street office a series of drawings by Sudanese children, which show villages being raided and people being killed. British lawmakers, including Nick Clegg, leader of the opposition Liberal Democrats, were due to join a rally in central London. Protesters plan to gather outside the Sudanese embassy.

More than 200,000 people have been killed in the Darfur conflict and over 2 million are displaced from their homes, UN statistics show.

Fighting has raged in Darfur since 2003, when ethnic African tribesman took up arms, complaining of decades of neglect and discrimination by the Sudanese Arab-dominated government. Khartoum has been accused of unleashing the janjaweed militia to commit atrocities against ethnic African communities in the fight with rebel groups.

Protests were scheduled to take place in about 30 countries yesterday, said Crisis Action, a humanitarian charity. It called for an immediate deployment of more peacekeeping troops to the region.

In a statement released yesterday, Brown backed the demand, saying he was frustrated by the “appalling situation and the slow progress.”

He called for faster deployment of international peacekeepers to Darfur and said he would be working with the US, the UN and African leaders in the coming week to restart the peace process.

“Five years is more than enough for anyone to have to live with the sort of suffering that the people of Darfur have had to endure,” Brown said.
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