Militia must be controlled to ensure peace, says AU

Peace will remain elusive in the troubled western Sudanese region of Darfur unless militia can be stopped from attacking civilians, the African Union (AU) chief mediator at the inter-Sudanese peace talks told the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday. An immediate ceasefire and long-term final status arrangements would be a complex task, Salim Ahmed Salim warned, as Darfur was home to myriad armed and dangerous militia, including the Janjawid, fragmented armed movements, bandits, foreign combatants and ethnic forces. The neutralisation of the Janjawid and "undisciplined militia" - stipulated under the "Enhanced Ceasefire Agreement" as put forward by the AU mediation team at negotiations in the Nigerian capital, Abuja - was a prerequisite for any peace agreement, Salim said. Security arrangements would make or break the negotiations. The proposals included the disengagement and redeployment of the forces, disarmament of the Janjawid, the control and neutralisation of militias, protection of displaced persons, security of nomadic migration corridors and the demilitarisation of humanitarian supply routes, he said. Despite these difficulties, Salim was optimistic about the recent progress the Sudanese government and the two main Darfurian rebel groups had made. He expressed hope that a deal could be reached by the 30 April deadline set by the AU. "We are working full-steam to meet this deadline," he said. In the meantime, the African Mission in Sudan (AMIS) was designing a detailed implementation plan on how to redeploy its forces to undertake the additional responsibilities under the new ceasefire arrangements. The added tasks of the approximately 7,000 AMIS troops would include verifying force positions on the ground, monitoring the disengagement and redeployment of armed groups, and patrolling demilitarised zones and humanitarian supply routes. Salim said the Security Council should extend maximum support to AMIS, so that the ceasefire agreement, once signed, could be followed up by upgrading and empowerment of the mission. There was no point in calling for the speedy conclusion of the agreement if nothing would be done to prepare AMIS for its expanded mandate, he observed. "My plea to you in this esteemed Council is that you do not wait for the transition to take place from AMIS to a UN force before strengthening the implementation mechanism of any agreement to be reached in Abuja," he said. According to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan's latest report on Darfur, the conflict continues to affect some 3.6 million people, of whom 1.8 million are internally displaced and 200,000 have fled to neighbouring Chad.