Renewed UN-African push for peace pact in Darfur

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 6 (Reuters) The United Nations and the African Union announced a new push for peace talks in Sudan's Darfur region to get splinter rebel groups and the government to stop fighting each other.

The Khartoum government and one rebel groups signed a peace agreement last April. But since then violence has escalated, Sudan has sent troops into Darfur, where at least 200,000 people have died in three year, and United Nations efforts for a robust peacekeeping force have been stalled by Khartoum.

Jan Eliasson, a former Swedish foreign minister, UN official and the current special envoy for Darfur, told reporters yesterday the object was to reduce the level of violence through the political process.

But Eliasson, who will go to Darfur after an African Union conference at the end of January, said his job was not to negotiate a peacekeeping force, which would be done by other UN officials.

He and Salim Ahmed Salim, the African Union's Darfur envoy, conferred with the new UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon of South Korea, who will also go to the AU summit in Ethiopia.

Sudan has more or less agreed to a ''hybrid'' African Union-United Nations force in Darfur but has rejected the 20,000 peacekeepers and police the Security Council wanted to send to support the 7,000 under-equipped African Union troops now in Darfur. An AU-UN team is to work out the numbers.

Both men were peppered with questions about why diplomacy was in the forefront when civilians needed security from brutal militia, some armed by the Sudan government, who have raped and pillaged and driven 2.5 million villagers from their homes.

''Everything is relative,'' Salim said, recalling Sudan's total rejection of UN troops to its acceptance of some kind of a mixed force. ''Let's keep building on what is possible.'' ''There is a hybrid in the peacekeeping area and we need a similar hybrid on the diplomatic front,'' Salim said. ''We have to do it.'' Western nations, including the United States, as well as many African states have pushed for UN peacekeepers in Darfur. But Sudan's Arab neighbors have been silent.

The war has spilled over into neighboring Chad and the Central African Republic. In December, the peacekeeping department, in a report issued in former Secretary-General Kofi Annan's name, recommended deploying peacekeepers in those two nations until all parties agree to a cease-fire and start negotiations toward a political solution.

He said UN peacekeepers could be attacked by rebel groups if they tried to stop cross-border activities and that a UN force '' would be operating in the midst of continuing hostilities and would have no clear exit strategy.'' The Security Council in June asked the peacekeeping department to explore protection of the camps and a mission was sent in late November. Several Western members said the report visualised a traditional peacekeeping force rather than rapid reaction units and guards for refugee camps.

Salim said fighting would not stop in Chad either unless that nation and Sudan came to an agreement. The two countries are supporting each other's rebels.

REUTERS SRS PM0455