UN chief in Sudan to push for Darfur peace

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Sudan on Monday in a bid to jumpstart the peace process in strife-torn Darfur ahead of a massive joint UN-African Union peacekeeping operation.Ban, who has made the Darfur conflict his first priority since taking office in January, will seek to ensure that the 26,000 strong UN-AU force can be deployed quickly to protect civilians who are bearing the brunt of violence.He was to have a private dinner with President Omar al-Beshir before heading to Juba in southern Sudan on Tuesday and Al-Fasher in Darfur, returning to Khartoum on Thursday. He is then to head to Sudan's neighbours Chad and Libya.The deployment of the hybrid UNAMID force-which will be the world's largest peacekeeping operation-was agreed by the UN Security Council on July 31 after months of intense diplomacy.But the full force is not expected to be on the ground before mid-2008 and reports of violence continue to emerge from the ravaged region the size of France."I want to know first hand the plight of those we seek to help," Ban said ahead of his first visit to Sudan as UN chief."My goal is to lock in the progress we have made so far, to build on it so that this terrible trauma may one day cease."According to UN estimates, more than 200,000 people have died and more than two million have been displaced in Darfur as a result of the combined effect of war and famine since the conflict erupted more than four years ago. But Khartoum disputes the figures and says only 9,000 people died."Now we have a historic opportunity. We must seize it," Ban said last week as he outlined a three-pronged action plan focusing on peacekeeping, political negotiations as well as humanitarian aid and development.Describing UNAMID as "one of the largest and most complex field operations the United Nations has ever undertaken, together with the African Union", the UN secretary general stressed that the operation could not succeed without Khartoum's cooperation.He said he would seek Beshir's "full support" at the end of his three-day tour of Sudan which includes a visit to Darfur for a first-hand look at "the very difficult circumstances under which our forces will operate".On Tuesday, he will visit Juba, capital of south Sudan where a 10,000-strong UN force has overseen an uneasy peace between government troops and ex-rebels since the end of a 21-year-old civil war.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=070903152704.a3iv8rnt&show_article=1&catnum=0

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