The newly appointed chief of the joint United Nations-African Union effort to bring peace to Darfur has assumed duties in the conflict-wracked Sudanese region.
A statement from the UNAMID received here Friday said Djibril Yipene Bassole, the Joint Chief Mediator for Darfur, has pledged to consult as widely as possible with the warring parties to try to find a lasting solution.
Bassolé assumed his duties in El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state and the headquarters of the hybrid UN-AU peacekeeping force (known as UNAMID).
According to the UN news release, the chief mediator stressed that any negotiations to resolve the five-year conflict that has killed an estimated 300,000 people and displaced 2.7 million others cannot take place in a climate of tension and mistrust.
"We have to put mechanisms in place that will not only allow a sustained ceasefire, but will also help avoid reoccurrence of violent incidents," he said.
Bassole said his priority was to hold talks with all the players on the ground in Darfur, where the number of rebel groups has splintered in the past year or so from a handful to around 30.
"The important phase for my assignment obviously is to get in touch with all the players on the ground so that I can absorb the realities on the ground, and to organize quite quickly a few work sessions so as to directly engage the issues," Bassole said.
Rodolphe Adada, the head of UNAMID and the Joint Special Representative of the UN and the AU in the region, met with Bassole on Thursday and promised that the mission would do everything it could to back his peace efforts.
Bassole is slated to visit South Darfur and West Darfur over the next four days before returning to Khartoum, the national capital.
Commenting on the recent incident in Kalma camp in South Darfur, in which 32 people, among them women and children lost their lives, Bassole announced that measures would be put in place to mitigate such a sad episode.
"One can not consider lightly any event which has caused such a tragic loss ... obviously everyone has his own share of responsibility," the JCM said.
Bassole said he did wish that Internally Displaced People (IDP)camps remain safe and secure areas so that the kind of violence that just occurred doesn't happen again.
JCM who said he understood the concerns of government and also those of the armed groups, stated however that "we have to sit around the table and find solutions that make everyone secure.
Source:Xinhua
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