UNITED NATIONS, March 28 (UPI) -- The crisis in Sudan's westernmost region of Darfur is not anywhere near being resolved and is threatening instability in neighboring countries with its export of refugees.
The latest in a series of moves to address the issue head on is one by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. On Wednesday he took the problem to the top, to the League of Arab States Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, along with pleas for ending conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians, in Lebanon and Iraq and to help solve Iran's nuclear program.
Simultaneously, the new U.N. chief emergency relief coordinator, Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes, was on the second leg of his two-week, three-country familiarization trip to the region. Ban's special envoy to Darfur, Jan Eliasson, also was in the region.
Back in Riyadh, the secretary-general told the summit instability in Arab countries was "of profound significance for international peace and security" and pledged his and the world organization's support "for peace, justice and the well being of your peoples."
"The Darfur crisis should also have a claim on your political and humanitarian energies," he told the summit. "The peace agreement signed last year has failed to end the fighting. Serious human rights abuses, targeted sexual violence, and grave violations of international humanitarian law continue to be committed by all sides."
He pointed out 2 million people have been displaced and 4 million rely on international humanitarian assistance. More than 200,000 people have died as a result of the Darfur conflict over the last four years.
"We have to re-double our efforts to bring all parties concerned to the peace process," the secretary-general said. "At the same time, our plans to deploy a heavy support package for peacekeeping should go ahead expeditiously."
Khartoum has been oft-reported to agree on a U.N. force and then later qualify the accord.
"These plans are fully in accordance with the Abuja and Addis agreements, and I urge you to use your good offices on these two tracks," Ban asked the heads of state and government gathered in Riyadh. "I am confident that the League of Arab States has a positive role to play in enabling an early settlement that will bring peace to Darfur. The people of Darfur have waited too long, and suffered so much."
Holmes arrived in Chad's capital of N'Djamena Wednesday, following visits to camps for internally displaced persons and aid projects in the area around Goz Beida, about 100 kilometers from the Sudanese border.
Eliasson and his counterpart from the African Union, Salim Ahmed Salim, held talks Tuesday with representatives of Darfur's Arab tribes and leaders of its civil society groups as part of ongoing efforts to revitalize the peace process.
The U.N. Mission in Sudan said the leaders expressed their views on how to attain a sustainable settlement of the Darfur problem, where government forces and allied Janjaweed militias have fought rebel groups since they took up arms, partly in protest over the distribution of resources.
There are so many agreements involving conflicts in Sudan, they are hard to keep track. The most recent on Darfur was just penned in Khartoum. Others were signed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and in Abuja, Nigeria.
The government of Sudan and the United Nations signed a joint communiqué in which Khartoum pledged to support, protect and facilitate all humanitarian operations in Darfur through rapid and full implementation of all measures outlined in the Moratorium on Restrictions, which was first agreed in July 2004.
Both parties recognized progress had been made in addressing the humanitarian situation since the signing of the moratorium and this recommitment was to address current problems in the implementation of that agreement.
Specifically, the Sudanese government has, among other things, undertaken to extend current visas and permits through January 2008 to provide international non-governmental organization country directors and their families multiple entry visas and to fast-track NGO visa and customs procedures.
Sudan had been criticized for not only failing to protect humanitarian workers, but for making it difficult for them to enter and work in the country.
