The Arab League (AL), the United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU) on Monday called for a political settlement of the crisis in the western Sudanese Darfur region, which is seen as the key to solving the Darfur crisis.

The appeal was made during a meeting between AL Secretary General Amr Moussa, UN Secretary General's Envoy to Darfur Jan Eliasson and AU Envoy to Darfur Salem Ahmed Salem, the Egyptian MENA news agency reported.

The three-way meeting tackled on the situation in Darfur and the role the three bodies can play in the troubled region, as well as the scale of progress towards solving the crisis, according to Moussa.

For his part, Salem urged for regional and international efforts to solve the Darfur crisis through the AL-UN-AU coordination, noting that countries such as Egypt, Libya, Eritrea and Chad can play a great role in solving the crisis to make the political process a success.

Meanwhile, Eliasson stressed that there was no military solution to the Darfur crisis and the only solution is a political one, adding that preparations for deploying peacekeeping troops in Darfur were going on the right track.

Earlier on Monday, during his meeting with Salem and Eliasson, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit warned that slapping sanctions on Sudan would deteriorate the situation in the western Sudanese Darfur region, urging the UN and the AU to exert utmost efforts to reach a political settlement of the Darfur crisis.

Egypt has put forward a proposal which includes a timetable, objectives and a set of incentives and penalties to ensure reaching a swift agreement between the Khartoum government and the rebel movements, as well as a call for holding a meeting to be attended by regional and international parties to garner support for the proposal, Abul Gheit said, adding that Egypt has decided on opening a diplomatic representation office in Darfur to follow up all developments in the war-torn region.

For his part, the UN envoy urged all parties to swiftly act to bring an end to the suffering of the Darfur people and called on the rebel groups to join the political process, noting that time is ripe for mobilizing efforts to reach a political solution to the Darfur crisis.

The meetings coincided with the talks between Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and visiting Sudanese President Omer al- Bashir on Monday as Mubarak asserted that dialogue, not sanctions, should be the way to solve the current Darfur crisis, according to Egyptian Presidential Spokesman Suleiman Awad.

Mubarak also expressed his objection to the attempt by some international powers to increase the pressure on Sudan, Awad added, noting that the only way to solve the crisis is the broadening of the Abuja accord, signed on May 5, 2006 in Nigeria between the Sudanese government and one of the three negotiating rebel factions, to include all rebel factions.

Khartoum was under mounting pressures to approve the deployment of UN peacekeepers in Darfur, although it recently accepted the first two phases of a UN peacekeeping plan for Darfur but stalled the third phase of the plan to create a much larger UN-AU hybrid force.

Source: Xinhua