KHARTOUM, 10 May 2006 — The United Nations stepped up efforts yesterday to prop up a peace deal aimed at ending three years of bloodshed in Darfur after US President George W. Bush urged Khartoum to accept UN peacekeepers. Two of the world body’s senior envoys were engaged in talks to secure further commitment to the fragile agreement amid conflicting signals from the government on the deployment of UN troops in the war-torn region.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s representative in Sudan, Jan Pronk, headed to Darfur yesterday in an attempt to secure the support of all rebel groups for the peace deal signed in Abuja last Friday. “Jan Pronk will resume the efforts he started a week ago in Abuja. But now on the ground he will prod the rebels who didn’t sign the agreement to join the peace process,” UN spokesman Bahaa Elkoussy told AFP.
A peace deal was signed Friday by the Sudanese government and the largest faction of the main Darfur rebel movement - the Sudan Liberation Movement - to end the three-year-old civil war in the impoverished western region. Another SLM faction and the Justice and Equality Movement still have reservations on the agreement, which was inked after Washington and London dispatched top officials to African Union-sponsored talks.
Meanwhile, UN emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland also continued his consultations in Sudan as part of a visit aimed at assessing the humanitarian situation in Darfur. On Monday, he had to retreat from a camp sheltering displaced Darfuris when some of them staged a protest demanding international protection that turned violent and resulted in the death of an AU interpreter.
Egeland said he would ask Khartoum to ease travel restrictions and bureaucracy, which have hampered aid workers in the past. “The humanitarian operation is unsustainable ... and we are here to work together with the government but they have to help us help their people,” he told Reuters.
