UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 5 (UPI) -- Sticking to his promise to make Darfur a priority, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and others met with an African Union envoy in New York Friday.
While nothing definitive was decided during the talks that included AU envoy Salim Ahmed Salim and the Secretary-General's special envoy for Darfur Jan Eliasson, the United Nations is optimistic it can end the crisis.
Friday's meeting followed an inaugural gathering of the newly formed U.N. Darfur Task Force Thursday. The group is responsible for streamlining an end to the crisis in which more than 200,000 people have been killed and two million displaced since clashes erupted between government forces, allied militias and rebels in 2003.
After U.N. envoy Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah's recent visit to Khartoum, Sudan's President Omar el-Bashir agreed last month to a three-phased approach for a hybrid U.N.-AU peacekeeping force, which will take over the existing African (Union) Mission in Sudan, known as AMIS. Compared to AMIS' 7,000 troops, the new force is expected to include 17,000 troops and 3,000 police officers.
In the first phase, the United Nations is giving $21 million in aid including 24 police advisers and 43 staff officers to the AU force. The second phase will include deploying several hundred U.N. military, police and civilian staff to help AMIS.
Picking up where former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan left off, Ban vowed to make Darfur a main concern. Annan, in consultation with Ban, appointed Eliasson special envoy last month. Eliasson was scheduled to leave Friday for AU Headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to meet senior Ethiopian government and AU officials before traveling to Sudan for meetings with the Government of National Unity in Khartoum.
