Darfur 'not a helpless case': Arab League chief
LONDON (AFP) — Arab League Secretary-General Amr Mussa said Wednesday the situation in strife-torn Darfur was not hopeless and peace talks could resume, as long as certain conditions are met.
"Darfur is not a helpless case, it is a case that needs cooperation," Mussa told a conference at the Chatham House foreign policy think-tank in London.
"The Arab League, the African Union and the United Nations are working together to help solve that problem."
Mussa said a joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force should be ready for deployment in the strife-torn western Sudanese area "by the spring."
If the finishing touches were also put to a mooted compensation package for victims of the violence, then there was a possibility that peace talks could resume, Mussa said.
"If the rebels come back into the field, then we can be optimistic," he said.
"But I seize this opportunity to call on all European governments to stop inviting the rebels and providing them with a nice life."
He said he feared that if the tribesmen acquired a taste for life in the West, they would eventually ask themselves "why they should ever return to Darfur."
Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Sunday offered to host peace talks on Darfur in Britain.
A Downing Street spokesman said British officials had been in contact with the Khartoum regime and rebel groups to offer the possibility of a summit.
There has been little progress on the joint UN-AU force in recent months while violence has flared again in Darfur.
More than 200,000 people have died there and 2.2 million have fled their homes since the conflict erupted in 2003, the UN says. The Sudanese government puts the number of deaths at 9,000.
The conflict began when ethnic minority rebels took up arms against the Sudanese regime and Arab militia.
