Warring Darfur parties agree to talks

Warring parties in Sudan's Darfur agreed yesterday to revive peace talks after United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged firm action to end a conflict he described as near hell on earth.

A statement after talks between rebels and Sudanese Government officials in Chad's capital N'Djamena said the parties had agreed to prepare for "the rapid and vigorous resumption" of peace talks. It said the talks would be attended by high-level representatives, to swiftly reach an accord.

It also said the parties had agreed to a "total and definitive ceasefire" and asked that the African Union reinforce its peacekeeping mission in Darfur "so that the Darfur crisis is resolved in an African framework".

The declaration came after Annan urged the UN Security Council to take immediate steps to stop the war in western Sudan, which has killed at least 70,000 people since March and displaced two million.

Peace talks between the warring parties in Nigeria's capital Abuja had been stalled since December.

The statement in N'Djamena gave no firm date for new talks but Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo, chair of the 53-member African Union, said this week he hoped they would start again in Abuja at the end of this month.

The N'Djamena agreement was reached between Sudanese Government officials and Darfur's two main rebel groups - the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement.

The parties also agreed a verification team would be sent to Darfur to map the positions of the belligerents with a view to separating them - a move the rebel groups previously rejected. Both sides agreed to co-operate with the team.

On Thursday, Annan urged the Security Council to take urgent action to end the Darfur war, saying it should consider all options, including sanctions and stronger peacekeeping efforts.

Annan also backed a call by the United States for a travel and assets freeze on those violating the ceasefire. "While the United Nations may not be able to take humanity to heaven, it must act to save humanity from hell," he said at the meeting called to review a report by a UN-appointed commission on Darfur.

The report accused the Sudanese Government and militias of "heinous crimes". It said rebels were responsible for serious crimes but its chief criticism was directed at the Government's inability to stop marauding Arab militiamen.

"The last two years have been little short of hell on earth for our fellow human beings in Darfur," Annan said.

Aid workers said yesterday hundreds of refugees were still flooding into the Kalma camp in Darfur, fleeing attacks by soldiers and militias. The camp, built for 60,000 people, is now home to more than 150,000.

However, the UN Security Council was split yesterday over where to try war crime cases from Darfur, with Europe, China and the US pushing different options and diplomats seeing no easy solution.

For the first time, 12 of the 15 Security Council members decided that perpetrators of atrocities should go before the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which the US opposes.

Opposition during consultations on Thursday also came from China and Algeria, which agree with Sudan that Khartoum should use its own courts and want no referral to either the ICC or to a US-proposed new ad hoc court in Arusha, Tanzania, using facilities of the 1994 Rwanda genocide tribunal.

- Reuters