Egypt-Libya agree new steps in peace initiative

Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa and Libya’s special representative for Africa, former foreign minister Ali Tureiki they had agreed on steps to implement a joint peace initiative for peace in Sudan. Reuters said they told reporters after a meeting in Cairo at the weekend contacts were underway to prepare for dialogue and both sides in the Sudanese conflict should abstain from anything likely to obstruct the peace initiative and from hostile media campaigns against each other. Moussa said a suitable atmosphere should prevail before a preparatory meeting in advance of an inter-Sudanese reconciliation conference could take place. That meeting was to have opened in Cairo last month but the SPLM refused to agree, saying it preferred to have mediation by the East African regional grouping, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), news agencies reported. Moussa said there was no time to waste in the effort to achieve peace in Sudan, whether through the Libyan-Egyptian initiative or the parallel IGAD process, and that he had contacted Kenya - currently president of IGAD - in order to coordinate the two sets of talks.