A top United Nations peacekeeping official met Thursday in El Fasher, North Darfur, with Minni Minawi, leader of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA/MM), one of the country's rebel factions.
Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Alain Le Roy held the talk with the SLA/MM as part of his first official visit to Sudan's Darfur region, where the organization's peacekeeping body is designated to field its largest mission to stem the country's conflict.
The SLA/MM has signed the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) with the government two years ago, while other rebel factions have yet to do so.
In August, the military chief of the joint UN-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID), General Martin Luther Agwai, warned that the splintered rebel movements must unite at the negotiating table if there is to be a lasting solution to the conflict.
UNAMID gave no details of Le Roy's talks with Minawi, who met with Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Taha last month, and concertedly announced that they were turning a new page in their commitment to the full implementation of the DPA and the formation of a joint military committee to ensure an end to all hostilities.
At the time, UNAMID deputy head General Henry Anyidoho said that he hoped the announcement would attract the non-signatories of the DPA to join the process in a more comprehensive accord.
UNAMID was deployed at the beginning of this year and will become the largest UN peacekeeping operation with some 26,000 personnel at full strength.
Currently it has some 10,000 troops and police officers on the ground and still lacks essential equipment such as helicopters.
Le Roy has already visited Southern Sudan, where the organization is fielding a separate operation -- the 10,000-strongUN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) monitoring a 2005 peace agreement that ended the 21-year-long north-south civil war.
Source: Xinhua
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