UN draws up aid-for-peace offer to Sudan

A new draft resolution circulated within the United Nations Security Council urges warring parties in southern Sudan and western Darfur province to reach peace agreements, promising international support and possible debt forgiveness.

But the British draft circulated yesterday also reiterates that the security council will consider “further urgent action” against any party in the Darfur conflict that fails to implement an April ceasefire, protect civilians, cooperate with African Union peacekeepers, disarm militias and prosecute the perpetrators of atrocities.

Council members are expected to discuss the draft next week and adopt the resolution during a meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, on November 18-19, only the fourth time since 1952 that the security council will hold a formal meeting outside New York.

US ambassador John Danforth, the current council president who conceived the Nairobi meeting to focus on the crisis in Sudan, said on Thursday that the resolution would ”present the concept of the carrot – namely that the international community will be there for Sudan if there is peace”.

But if there was no peace, he said, the council would make clear that “nothing good is going to come to the various groups”.

Danforth chose Nairobi because government and rebel negotiators are meeting there to try to finalise a peace agreement to end a 21-year civil war in southern Sudan that began when rebels from the mainly animist and Christian south took up arms against the predominantly Arab and Muslim north.

The draft resolution encourages the parties in Nairobi ”to redouble their efforts” to rapidly reach an agreement which must be implemented “fully and transparently”.

It also “underlines the importance of progress in peace talks” in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, to resolve the 20-month Darfur conflict “and insists that all parties … negotiate in good faith to reach agreement speedily”.

Sudan’s government is accused of backing pro-government Arab militia in Darfur known as Janjaweed in a campaign of violence – including rapes, killings and the burning of villages – to help put down a rebellion by non-Arab African groups. The government denies backing the militias. The Arab militias and African groups are both Muslim.

Expressing serious concernat “the growing insecurity and violence” in Darfur, the draft resolution demands that all armed groups immediately stop attacks, co-operate with relief and monitoring efforts, and obey international humanitarian law.

Once a comprehensive peace agreement is reached, the draft reiterates the council’s readiness to establish a UN peace support operation to implement it.

On the financial side, the draft encourages UN bodies, the World Bank, the European Union and others to continue working on an “assistance package for the reconstruction and economic development of Sudan, including possible debt forgiveness” that would be activated when a peace deal is reached. A donors’ conference would also take place.

The draft welcomes deployment of an expanded African Union force in Darfur and urges UN member states to provide logistics and financing for the troops and for humanitarian efforts in Sudan and neighbouring Chad. It also urges all parties to co-operate with an international commission investigating human rights violations in Darfur, including whether acts of genocide occurred.