UN to hold 'rare meeting'
2004-10-27 15:16
United Nations - The UN Security Council voted on Tuesday to hold a rare meeting in Africa next month to try to focus international attention on Sudan, site of Africa's longest-running civil war.
"This is certainly much more than symbolism," said US ambassador John Danforth, who will hold the council presidency next month when the 15-nation council meets in Nairobi, the capital of neighbouring Kenya, on November 18-19.
"It furthers the peace process in Sudan and it's an opportunity for the Security Council to demonstrate to all sides in the Sudan that the international community is not going to go away," he told reporters.
It is the first time the Security Council has held a formal meeting outside UN headquarters since a gathering in Panama in 1973, although it regularly sends missions abroad.
Security Council hoping for 'definitive peace deal'
Its last session outside New York was held at UN offices in Geneva in 1990 to meet Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
The Security Council is hoping to push the parties toward a definitive peace deal to end Sudan's long-running civil war and also bring attention to the crisis in the country's troubled western Darfur region.
Danforth is US President George W Bush's former special envoy to Sudan, where a civil war erupted between the Islamic government in the north and the largely Christian, animist south in 1983.
The government and the main southern rebel group, John Garang's Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army, launched a new round of peace talks in Nairobi on October 7.
After more than two years of talks and six protocols covering key political issues, the two sides appear close to reaching a comprehensive peace agreement.
Sudan, in the meantime, has become the focus of international concern over the situation in Darfur, where an estimated 70 000 people have died following a separate rebel uprising against the Khartoum government since February 2003.
The government called on Arab militias to help put down the rebellion and those militias now stand accused of waging a scorched earth campaign against indigenous blacks, which the United States has termed a genocide.
Twice already this year, the Security Council has passed resolutions calling on the Khartoum government to disarm the militias or face the threat of international sanctions.