CAIRO, 7 May 2005 — Egypt is to hold a regional summit on the crisis in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region as part of an effort to help Khartoum comply with UN resolutions on the conflict, an Egyptian daily reported yesterday. The two-day summit, expected to bring together the leaders of Egypt, Chad, Libya, Nigeria and Sudan will open on May 15 at the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, said Egypt’s official Al-Ahram newspaper.

“The summit will discuss the implications of UN Security Council Resolution 1593 on Darfur and the trial of those responsible for committing crimes in the region at the International Criminal Court at The Hague,” the paper said. Egypt had initially planned to convene the Darfur summit on April 20, but it was postponed for logistical reasons, according to the Egyptian government.

Darfur rebel groups had already rejected the idea of the summit, charging that its only purpose was to offer support to the Sudanese government. The Security Council approved a resolution in late March demanding prosecution before the Hague-based court of 51 suspects accused of human rights violations in Darfur.

The inquiry found that Sudanese government forces and militias had committed abuses including murder, torture, rape and pillage in the suppression of the two-year-old ethnic minority uprising in Darfur. The scorched earth campaign waged by the government against the rebels has left more than 300,000 dead and 2.4 million people displaced, according to a report by a British parliamentary committee.

Sudan’s first vice president witnessed the signing of a peaceful settlement of tribal conflict in Darfur on Thursday in a remote part of the region after weeks of talks.

Thousands of cheering villagers, brightly dressed women and white-turbaned camel riders greeted Ali Osman Mohamed Taha in Um Kaddada in the northeast of troubled Darfur.

Some in the crowd said their solution to the tribal clashes in the east of the region should be used as a template for the rest of Darfur. The agreement came after 2 weeks of talks between local tribes, Arabs and non-Arabs, and involved drawing boundaries between farms and nomadic cattle herders’ grazing paths.

“We say here again that the only solution to the problem in Darfur is through peace and negotiations,” Taha told thousands of Darfuris. “We say to those who are carrying arms amongst us now and to the world: our hands are outstretched to you, our hearts are open to you. We don’t want war anymore,” he said.