PRESS BRIEFING BY SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE FOR SUDAN

 

With the 31 December deadline for concluding a peace agreement in the southern Sudan fast approaching, a senior United Nations envoy today said that the major global players -- including the five permanent members of the Security Council –- must present a unified position, leaving the negotiating parties no alternative but to find a political road map out of a separate crisis that had pitted Khartoum against rebel groups for almost two years.

During a press conference at Headquarters, Jan Pronk, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for the Sudan, stressed that a definitive settlement ending the long-running war in the South was the key to solving a separate crisis in the Sudan’s western Darfur region, where nearly 2 million people had been displaced and Janjaweed militias stood accused of killing and raping thousands of villagers.  The fighting there began last year when rebels took up arms to demand a greater share of the economic resources in an area the size of France.

“You all may be sceptical, but I have told my staff in Khartoum that there is no room for scepticism any more.  We are going to make it work”, Mr. Pronk said, reminding correspondents that the Sudanese Government and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) last month signed a Memorandum of Understanding at an extraordinary session of the Security Council in Nairobi, Kenya, pledging to conclude successfully by the end of the year the peace talks on the southern Sudan that had been ongoing in the Kenyan town of Naivasha since mid-2003.

Calling peace in the south a "sine qua non" for a solution to the Darfur crisis, he noted that such an accord would entail a new constitution, devolution of power and the presence of southern former rebels in the Government who would be able to understand the problems in the west.  When asked to explain, Mr. Pronk said the road to success in Darfur led through Nairobi.  The talks in Abuja had been slow going largely because on one side were the young, loose groups of rebels without much experience at negotiating.  Their negotiators were also not very representative of the fighters on the ground.  On the other side, the Government did not have much sympathy for the rebels.

But as soon as an agreement was reached on the conflict in the South, there would be a new constitution and a new government, of which the SPLM/A would be part.  So then, the negotiating parties on Darfur issues became a part of an overall government, and sympathetic to the situation and more open to guidance on negotiation.  He said that in Nairobi, “the mood is good and I would say the chances are positive”.  He added he was “keeping his fingers crossed”, because there still remained the “extremely difficult” bone of contention on the size and financing of the army. So far, none of the parties had moved on that issue.

Confident that the peace talks would be successfully concluded on time, Mr. Pronk said he was in New York discussing preparations for the full deployment of the United Nations Advance Mission in the Sudan (UNAMIS) following a new mandate from the Security Council, hopefully by the third week of January.  That would be followed over the subsequent six months by deployment of some 9,000 to 10,000 troops.

He envisioned those troops being in place for six years, through the holding of a national referendum and perhaps sometime after, to oversee its outcome.  He hoped the newly mandated mission would be comprehensive, covering all traditional areas, including, peace-building, political, humanitarian, development and reintegration.  He added that he already had several firm offers for troops “from a number of South Asian countries”.

And he praised the 900 African Union (AU) ceasefire monitors at present in Darfur, who are eventually meant to total some 4,000.  "Sometimes Western observers think they are better than the Africans", he said.  "It is not true.  They are doing an excellent job."

Turning to the role that could be played by major actors both inside and outside the continent, he said it was time for more than “kind words and recommendations” from the big powers.  All the Sudanese parties needed to see a united front, particularly from the Security Council.

“They need to see that the permanent five Security Council members [China, France, Russian Federation, United Kingdom and the United States] are no longer divided on the way forward”, he said.  If the Sudanese Government and the rebels were faced with a unified front, with the powerful nations in the world saying that they would not tolerate non-compliance with the Council’s resolution, the parties would have no other choice but to come up with a negotiated political solution, he added.

Mr Pronk opened the press conference reiterating his condemnation of the murder of two workers for Save the Children (United Kingdom) in Darfur over the weekend.  Today, he said there were indications that the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) had been responsible for the attack, and he called on the international community to hold any side to the conflict, whether the Government or rebels, responsible for actions committed by its forces.

"Even if it is not a premeditated murder, but on the basis of the SLA soldiers who just decided themselves to kill humanitarian workers, in my view it is extremely important for the international community to hold the SLA leadership responsible for all wrong-doings of all of their soldiers.”

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