AU, UN enovys say security and aid needed in Darfur before talks

AU, UN enovys say security and aid needed in Darfur before talks

Feb 15, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — The AU and UN envoys for Darfur stressed the need of security and delivery of humanitarian aid to the Darfur displaced. They said de-escalation of the violence must be prior to the engagement of the political process.

AU Salim Ahmed Salim and UN Jan Eliasson (AP)
Below is a near verbatim transcript of the opening remarks of UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy Jan Eliasson for Darfur and African Union Special Envoy for Darfur Salim Ahmed Salim made during the Joint Press Conference they held on 15 February 2007 at UNMIS Press Briefing Room, Ramsis Building - Khartoum.
Spokesperson Radhia: Good evening everyone and thank you very much for coming to this press conference that is held jointly by Dr. Salim Ahmed Salim the Special Envoy of the African Union for Darfur and Mr. Jan Eliasson the Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for Darfur as well. They are going to be briefing you on the joint mission which they have been undertaking in Sudan – Khartoum and Darfur. They have just arrived from Darfur.
Without further ado, I will give the floor to Dr. Salim Ahmed Salim who will be giving you his introductory remarks and will be followed by Mr. Jan Eliasson with his remarks as well.
Dr. Salim Ahmed Salim …
AU Special Dr. Salim Ahmed Salim: Ladies and gentlemen, our joint mission has come about as a result of a decision originally taken at the meeting in Addis Ababa between the leadership of the UN and the leadership of the African Union, with the full participation of the members of the Security Council, a number of countries and institutions including the League of Arab States, and so on.
In that meeting which was co-chaired by Kofi Annan and Alpha Oumar Konar, a number of things were agreed upon. One of the areas of agreement was the re-energizing of the political process in order to arrive to a political settlement to the conflict in Darfur. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had appointed a good friend, Mr. Jan Eliasson here, as a Special Envoy [for Dafur]. This appointment was confirmed by the new Secretary-General Mr. Ban Ki-moon. I was appointed by Chairman Konare as Special Envoy of the African Union.
This is our first mission together. We came here [to the press conference] after we had very interesting discussions in the last three days. We started here on Monday. We met with government officials here in Khartoum, we met literally with all the signatories of the DPA, and then we went to Darfur and spent the whole of yesterday and part of today in Darfur. We had a meeting with AMIS in Darfur. We also met with the field commanders [of DPA NON-signatories] somewhere under a tree – they call it a “peace tree” - in northern Darfur. We also met with representatives of IDPs and the representatives of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). We met also with the tribal chiefs – some of them at least.
Our message throughout has been: One: we will do our utmost to re-engage the political process for the purpose of ensuring that there is an implementation of the existing agreement.
Secondly; bearing in mind the reservations [about the DPA], sometimes opposition to [the DPA], we will look into how we can take care of these reservations; how to overcome some of those difficulties, in order to propel the peace process forward.
We have come also at a time where there is a serious humanitarian concern as far as the situation of the operations of the humanitarian agencies that are operating in Darfur is concrned.
Throughout our visit, both in our discussions with the government leaders, our discussions with other signatories and in our discussions with the non-signatories, we have made it clear that this issue is oneof the issues of primary concern for us; emphasizing to all stakeholders the importance of creating the necessary conditions for the humanitarian organizations to be able to operate in a manner which will be to the benefit of the people of Darfur but more particularly, to the benefit of people in the IDP camps.
We have stressed the importance of creating an enabling environment for the negotiations to take place. This enabling environment, inter alia, presupposes the de-escalation of the violence – the reduction of violence – and preferably the cessation of hostilities. We have made this point to all concerned, and I would like to say that thus far we have been encouraged by the initial reaction of everybody we met on this issue – the importance of de-escalation of violence - and also by the assurances by all the other parties that they will do the utmost to facilitate the operations of the humanitarian organizations.
But essentially our work is political. Our role is to create conditions for the resumption of dialogue between all the parties. Clearly we have not been able to meet all the parties yet. We have tried to focus on meeting all parties who are in Darfur and who are in Sudan. To that extent, we have succeeded. But there are others who we have not been able to meet and it is our intention, as part of our efforts, to make sure to reach out and meet all the other stakeholders, all the non-signatories.
We have been emphasizing that the most important thing to focus on is: what are those issues which are of particular concern to those who have not been able to come on board the peace process? And you know, when we go back to the history of the Abuja process, we had issues which were centrally discussed: the question of power-sharing, wealth sharing and the question of security arrangements. In our discussions whether with those who are signatories or with those who are opposed to the DPA, they made it very clear that they think that there are shortcomings and they highlighted a number of issues. For example the question of security and stability was highlighted everywhere we went. Another issue highlighted was the question of compensation - especially the measures to be taken to address the legitimate concerns of the IDPs, measures to be taken to deal with the issue of refugees and also the whole question of development and reconstruction was emphasized.