The African Union was yesterday to bring Sudan's warring government and rebel armies into talks with regional power-brokers aimed at heading off a mounting humanitarian crisis in the province of Darfur.
Delegations from the Khartoum government and from Darfur's two rebel groups have gathered in the Nigerian capital Abuja to make their rival cases before an audience of African leaders, African Union officials and the head of the Arab League.
PHOTO: REUTERS
On the eve of the talks the host, President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, who is also chairman of the African Union, issued an unusually stern warning to President Omar Hassan al-Beshir's government that it must move quickly to restore order in Darfur.
The Nigerian leader said that Sudan must disarm the feared Janjaweed Arab militia, and called on Khartoum to allow a beefed-up African Union peacekeeping force of 2,000 Nigerian and Rwandan troops to deploy to Darfur.
"The leaders of the government of Sudan itself proclaimed that the Janjaweed were armed by the government. The government armed them so that they could be used against the rebels," he said, in a televised interview.
"The government's argument is `If we disarm them before the rebels what will happen?' But who is to disarm the rebels, those who armed the Janjaweed? This is where I believe that the effort of the African Union will be necessary," he said.
"And that is why, in the first instance, we took up our protection force, in addition to the observer team," Obasanjo said.
Nigeria and Rwanda have made more than 2,000 soldiers available to transform a small African Union ceasefire monitoring already team in Darfur into a genuine peacekeeping force. Sudan has not yet allowed them to deploy.
The UN reports that more than one million people have been driven from their homes in 18 months of fighting and that more than 30,000 have been killed, many of them in Janjaweed raids against unarmed villagers.
The results of yesterday's talks will be crucial when the UN decides this week whether Sudan has done enough to ensure the safety of Darfur's beleaguered people to head off international sanctions.
African Union commission chairman Alpha Oumar Konare arrived in Abuja on Sunday as had a special envoy from Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, African Union spokesman Assane Ba said.
British Foreign Minister Jack Straw was due in Sudan yesterday and his Dutch counterpart, Bernard Bot, is expected to follow him later in the week on behalf of the rotating EU presidency.
Meanwhile, the UN Security Council has given Khartoum until the end of the week to comply with a detailed plan to restore peace and security to Darfur or face international sanctions.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
RSS