UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon began a weeklong Africa trip devoted to Darfur by pleading with Sudan on Monday to ensure the human rights of its citizens.
Ban also hinted that he would show more understanding toward the country’s much-criticized leadership.
“I have never put much stock in grand rhetoric, dreams of the future, ‘visions’ that promise more than can be delivered,” he said, addressing an invited gathering at Khartoum’s palatial Friendship Hall.
“I am a realist, a man of action,” he said. “I believe in results.”
After his speech, Ban met privately with Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir. Bashir has been shunned by many national leaders for his repeated denials of human-rights abuses under his government.
Ban told the audience that he was here to help end the violence in Darfur with a plan that combines a large force of peacekeepers with negotiations toward a political settlement between rebel militias and the government.
“There must be a peace to keep,” Ban said. “Peacekeeping must be accompanied by a political solution.”
On July 31, the Security Council authorized a joint African Union-UN force of 20,000 soldiers and 6,000 civilian police to be sent to Darfur to protect civilians from the wave of killings, rapes and pillaging that has cost more than 200,000 lives and left more than two million villagers homeless. The joint force will be the world’s largest peacekeeping operation and cost more than $2 billion a year. UN officials said they hope to begin deployment in October and complete it by the beginning of 2008.
Ban said he would extend an invitation to the eight major rebel groups involved in the fighting in Darfur for a “full-fledged peace conference” this fall. The groups met last month in Arusha, Tanzania, and came up with a framework for sharing power and resources that the United Nations says lays a basis for talks with the government.
“There has to be a political will inside the government of Sudan to move toward negotiations, and we think that there is such a political will,” said an official traveling with the secretary general. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid upstaging Ban, added, “I never use the word ‘optimistic’ about Sudan as a rule, but at least there are some positive trends here.”
He listed them as the unified support of the Security Council, the cooperation of neighboring countries like Chad, Eritrea, Egypt and Libya, and the “express will” of Sudan to participate in negotiations.
