Security Council meeting to focus on Sudan, Somalia

The United Nations Security Council meeting that is due to take place on Thursday and Friday in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, will focus on the situation in Sudan and on the peace process in Somalia,a UN official said. Jean-Victor Nkolo, the media advisor to the Secretariat for the Security Council meeting in Nairobi, told IRIN on Tuesday that the session would discuss the crisis in the Darfur region of western Sudan and the long-running conflict in the south. "Somalia will also be discussed," Nkolo added. A Council statement issued earlier said the meeting would also be attended by representatives of the African Union, which is trying to broker a peace deal between Khartoum and insurgents fighting the Sudanese government in Darfur. Other officials in attendance will represent the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development - a grouping of east Africa states spearheading peace talks between the Sudanese government and the south-based rebel group, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army. The Nairobi meeting will mark the 11th time in the history of the Council that it has met away from UN Headquarters in New York. Previously, it has met in London, Paris (twice), Geneva, Addis Ababa and Panama City, as well as several venues in New York State, other than the UN headquarters. The representatives of the 15 members of Council are expected to travel to Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Uganda after the Nairobi meeting, from 20 to 25 November, the UN reported on Monday. "We're going to say that the international community is there to help," French Ambassador Jean-Marc de la Sablière told a news conference in New York. The Council, he added, would encourage the four African States to foster dialogue and cooperation with each other. "There has to be in this region, among all the countries, a confidence which has been lacking in the past," UN News quoted him as saying. While the UN was there to help, he added, it "cannot replace the parties; it is up to the parties involved to achieve reconciliation and dialogue."