TOKYO (AFP) — A senior US official said Friday that Sudan and Darfur rebels should focus on working with a UN-backed mediator after President Omar al-Beshir launched a controversial peace initiative.
Beshir started a "people's initiative" for peace in parched Darfur on Thursday with talks attended by party leaders and foreign dignitaries.
But Darfur rebel groups shunned the meeting, calling it a sham by Beshir to curry favour overseas as he faces possible war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court.
Jendayi Frazer, the top US diplomat for Africa, said that Washington backed the work of the joint African Union-United Nations mediator for Darfur, Djibril Bassole, a former foreign minister of Burkina Faso.
"This could complement the effort of Bassole or it could be a distraction. It depends on what substantatively actually happens," Frazer, an assistant secretary of state, told a group of reporters on a visit to Tokyo.
"But the core approach to a peace agreement is one that the government of Sudan and the rebel groups have all agreed to, which is an AU-UN mediator," she said.
According to the United Nations, up to 300,000 people have died in Darfur and around 2.5 million have fled their homes since rebels rose up against Khartoum in February 2003. Sudan says 10,000 people have been killed.
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