United Nations chief in Sudan with Darfur focus

Ban, on his first visit to Sudan, will seek commitment to his plan from Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and visit a refugee camp in the western Sudanese Darfur region.

While Darfur will be the focus, his six-day tour will include a trip to south Sudan, where a 2005 peace deal ending more than two decades of north-south war that killed 2 million people is on shaky ground, and visit neighbouring Chad and Libya.

International experts estimate some 200,000 have died and 2.5 million have been driven from their homes during 4 1/2 years of fighting in Darfur. Sudan puts the death toll from the conflict, which flared when rebel groups took up arms against the government, charging it with neglect, at 9,000.

Last week, Ban sketched out a three-point approach to the crisis: deployment of 26,000 U.N. and African Union troops and police, approved by the Security Council in July, peace talks tentatively scheduled for October, and aid.

In an interview with Italian paper La Repubblica on Monday, Ban said Western nations including Italy needed to provide specialist troops for the force.

“We need technical and logistical assets, air transport capacity, and for this we are hoping for the contribution of European countries, including Italy,” he said. Invitations to the peace talks are due to be sent by the end of August to some of the around a dozen rebel factions.

“There has to be a political will inside the government of Sudan to move the negotiations and we think there is such a political will,” said a senior U.N. official on the trip.

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