U.S. official pushes for peace in Darfur
Published 9:00 pm Monday, May 1, 2006
WASHINGTON – Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick was dispatched to Africa on Monday to push for a peace agreement to end political and ethnic conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan.
Zoellick’s trip was announced after the first day of a two-day extended deadline for a settlement ended without a pact. Sudan’s government has said it will accept the accord, but rebel groups are still pressing additional demands.
Sunday’s deadline was extended at U.S. request.
“As long as the parties are talking, there’s always a chance for an agreement,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, but she declined to predict the outcome.
At a news conference, Rice said President Bush felt “very strongly and very passionately” about both the need for an agreement and getting a robust and largely African security force in to protect the people of Darfur.
“It takes time,” she said, “We need to shake the trees a little bit, shake the bureaucracy a little bit and say to people: ‘It’s not acceptable to wait any longer for at least the planning for a robust security force.’”
Zoellick will be there “into the undetermined future,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
By some estimates, at least 200,000 people have been killed and 2 million driven from their homes since 2003 in the western Sudan province. After a slow start, the world’s attention has focused on the conflict between a rebel insurgency and tribal militias linked to an Arab-dominated Khartoum government.
Efforts are also under way to provide a possible United Nations force to aid African Union troops, a move the Sudanese government has said it would support if a peace treaty is signed.
Thousands of people, some clutching signs that read, “Never Again,” rallied Sunday in Washington and several of the speakers urged President Bush to take stronger action to end the suffering amid what the administration has determined was genocide.
