An international conference on the situation in Sudan's Darfur region concluded in the Libyan capital Tripoli on Monday, highlighting the need to exert more efforts for pushing Darfur peace process, according to news from Tripoli.
Representatives of the United Nations, the African Union, the European Union and those from 15 countries including the five permanent member states of the UN Security Council, Sudan, Libya, Chad, Egypt and Eritrea attended the two-day meeting.
The participants "reasserted the joint AU-UN lead of the Darfur peace process, in partnership with regional actors, and pledged its unequivocal support and commitment to it," according to the final communique.
They appealed to all member states of the AU and UN and other stakeholders to refrain from supporting parallel initiatives outside the AU-UN led process.
The meeting said the current situation in Darfur was "dynamic, fragile and evolving rapidly" and called for an "urgent action to achieve a comprehensive political agreement to end the conflict and the long suffering of the people in Darfur."
In addition, the final communique actually admitted a failure of the international mediators to persuade the rebel Darfur rebel groups to come back to the negotiations table.
None of the Darfur rebel groups attended the Tripoli meeting, though Sudanese Presidential Adviser Mostafa Osman Ismail announced last Thursday that at least five rebel factions had agreed to participate in the meeting, including the powerful Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and a breakaway faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM).
A peace deal was signed in May 2006 by the Sudanese government and one of three rebel factions, but the other two refused the deal, claiming that it was unfair and failed to meet all their demands.
Since then, the main rebels have split into more than a dozen factions and the Sudanese government has complained that the proliferation of the rebel movements had become a main obstacle for the resumption of the peace negotiations.
"The peace in Darfur could not be achieved through negotiation with each armed group separately," Assistant of the Sudanese President Nafie Ali Nafie told U.S. special envoy for Sudan Andrew Natsios last week.
Apparently, more mediation efforts are needed to make more than a dozen of the Darfur rebel groups to unify their positions.
On the eve of the Tripoli meeting, five Darfur rebel groups announced in the Eritrean capital Asmara to form a new front in preparation for possible peace talks to end the four-year conflict in the region.
The new rebel group, the United Front for Liberation and Development (UFLD), was formed by two SLA factions, the Revolutionary Democratic Front Forces, the National Movement for Reform and Development and Sudan Federal Democratic Alliance.
The announcement came one day after the rebels met the UN envoy for Sudan, Jan Eliasson, who visited Khartoum and Asmara before arriving in the Libyan capital to attend the international meeting.
The Tripoli meeting failed to set a date and venue for the next Darfur peace talks between the warring sides, but international envoys and rebel groups which failed to sign the 2006 peace deal will meet next month to make a decision.
Invitations for the new round of negotiations should be issued by the Chairperson of the African Union Commission and the Secretary General of the United Nations, before the end of August 2007, it said.
It also requested special envoys of the UN and AU "to consult widely with all the relevant stakeholders on the most appropriate date and venue for the talks."
Source: Xinhua
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