By EDITH M. LEDERER
The Associated Press
Friday, January 5, 2007; 12:31 AM
UNITED NATIONS -- Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon devoted much of his first days on the job to the three-year conflict in Sudan's Darfur region, which has killed more than 200,000 people and displaced 2.5 million.
Since he took over from Kofi Annan on Jan. 1, the new U.N. chief has been holding daily meetings on Darfur in effort to find a peaceful solution.
On Wednesday, he met the new U.N. special envoy for Darfur, Jan Eliasson. On Thursday, he chaired what he called "a good meeting" with the newly formed Darfur Task Force comprising top U.N. officials.
On Friday, Ban will meet with Eliasson, a former Swedish foreign minister and General Assembly president, and the African Union's special envoy for Darfur, Salim Ahmed Salim, who was flying to New York to attend the session.
Ban told reporters on his first day of work Tuesday that he would put "my highest attention" on Darfur. He announced that his first overseas trip will be to attend the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Jan. 29-30, where he hopes to meet Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir.
"By engaging myself in the diplomatic process, I hope that we will be able to resolve peacefully, as soon as possible, this very serious issue," Ban said.
A May peace agreement signed by al-Bashir's government and one of the major rebel groups was supposed to help end the conflict. Instead, it has set off months of fighting between rival rebel factions that has added to the dead and displaced.
The conflict began in February 2003 when rebels from black African tribes took up arms, accusing Sudan's Arab-dominated government of discrimination and oppression. The government is alleged to have unleashed Arab tribal militia known as the Janjaweed against civilians in a campaign of murder, rape and arson _ a charge the government denies.
The 7,000-strong poorly equipped and financed African Union force now in Darfur has been unable to bring security to the vast western region. In August the U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution that called for more than 20,000 U.N. peacekeepers to replace the overwhelmed AU force.
But al-Bashir rejected the resolution, claiming a U.N. force would compromise Sudan's sovereignty and try to recolonize the country.
Annan then proposed a three-step U.N. package to beef up the African Union force, culminating with the deployment of a "hybrid" AU-U.N. force. He told al-Bashir every effort would be made to find African troops for a hybrid force of 17,300 military personnel and 5,300 police, but if that proved impossible the U.N. would use "a broader pool of troop contributing countries."
Last month, al-Bashir sent a letter to Annan appearing to endorse the package. But days later, on Dec. 27, Sudan's U.N. Ambassador Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem told reporters that the hybrid force must be smaller and have no U.N. peacekeepers in traditional blue helmets, only African troops supported by U.N. technical and logistical experts.