UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has proposed four areas where the United Nations can immediately help the African Union (AU) expand its ceasefire-monitoring mission in the strife-torn Darfur region of Sudan.
In a letter to AU Commission Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare, Mr. Annan offered support in: setting up a UN assistance cell; pre-screening police for participation in the AU mission; opening a Darfur regional office of the UN Advance Mission in Sudan (UNAMIS); and organizing a pledging conference to fund the enlarged AU mission.
The first group of the UN assistance cell, which would be based at the AUs headquarters in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, arrived there Monday.
The AU is expanding the size and scope of its mission in Darfur, an impoverished region in western Sudan that has been beset by conflict since early last year, from its current size of just over 350 ceasefire monitors and protection troops.
The ceasefire is between the Sudanese Government and two local rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), which have been waging conflict against each other since early last year.
About 1,45 million Sudanese are internally displaced and another 200.000 are living as refugees in neighbouring Chad because of both the fighting and the brutal attacks against civilians by militias known as the Janjaweed. The militias stand accused of killing and raping thousands of villagers and destroying homes and cropland.
At the request of the Security Council, Mr. Annan is setting up a commission of inquiry to investigate whether genocide has taken place in Darfur.
Meanwhile, Mr. Annans Deputy Special Representative for Political Affairs in Sudan, Taye Zerihoun, is travelling to the Chadian capital NDjamena to attend the latest meeting of the committee monitoring the ceasefire.
After the meeting Tuesday Mr. Zerihoun will then head to Nairobi, Kenya, to attend the resumption on Thursday of peace talks designed to resolve the separate long-running civil war in Sudans south.
Those talks are scheduled to resume with a meeting between Sudanese Vice-President Ali Osman Mohammed Taha and John Garang, the chairman of the rebel Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A).
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