U.N.'s Ban to visit Sudan's Darfur region

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NEW YORK — U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will make his first visit to Darfur next week, a trip that will include stops in Libya, Chad and the Sudanese capital Khartoum to meet with leaders.

"I want to go and see for myself the very difficult conditions under which our forces will operate," he said. "I want to know, firsthand, the plight of those they seek to help."

Mr. Ban will travel first to Libya, where he plans to discuss political options with Col. Moammar Gadhafi and then to Khartoum, where he plans to outline the Sudanese government's obligations to the 26,000-troop peacekeeping mission, one of the most expensive and complex in U.N. history.

The secretary-general said he will press President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for complete cooperation with the peacekeeping mission, and will object to the recent expulsion of Canadian and EU diplomats, as well as the country leader for CARE.

Mr. Ban will be in Darfur — a vast and inhospitable region with little water or arable land — Monday to Thursday, and then on to Juba to discuss Sudan's past north-south conflict.

Mr. Ban, however, cautioned yesterday not to expect a miracle from the short visit.

"Let me emphasize, from the outset, that this is not a trip about breakthroughs," Mr. Ban told the U.N. Security Council in an open meeting shortly before his press conference. "Rather, this visit is about consolidating the progress and laying the groundwork for forward movement."

Shortly before the General Assembly's annual debate, on Sept. 21, Mr. Ban plans to hold a high-level meeting of Sudan's neighbors and other concerned nations to be co-hosted by African Union Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare. Mr. Ban warned that sustainable peace would be impossible without development and investment in Darfur, especially if 2 million refugees were to return to and rebuild their homes.

The United Nations is blending international resources with the existing 8,000-strong African Union force to create a more robust, more mobile peacekeeping mission complete with helicopters and heavy equipment. The mission will be unique, U.N. officials say, not only for its logistics but also because command and control are to be jointly administered with the African Union.

But responsibility sharing has already stumbled in an early test, as the Rwandan general selected by the African Union as the second in command, Karenzi Karake, has been accused by human rights groups of participating in retaliatory massacres after Rwanda's 1994 genocide.

The Sudanese ambassador to the United Nations, Abdalmahmood Mohamad, yesterday expressed no alarm over the prospect.

"We think the issue of the Rwandan general is also brought to tarnish the image of the African Union forces and to tarnish the image of the African Union as far as command and control is concerned," Mr. Mohamad said.

At least 230,000 Darfurians have died and an estimated 2 million have been driven from their homes during four years of fighting between the government with its militia and a number of rebel groups. Mr. Ban yesterday called on all parties to halt the hostilities and come to a "full-fledged peace conference" he hopes to convene by the end of the summer.