Agence France-Presse,
France, the United States, China and some 15 other nations agreed on Monday to redouble efforts to end bloodshed in Sudan's Darfur region by supporting a new peace force and negotiations on a settlement.
“The international community simply cannot continue to sit by,” US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said at the end of the one-day conference in the French capital aimed at shoring up peace moves in Darfur.
“We really must redouble our efforts,” she said.
The conference came after Sudan earlier this month bowed to months of pressure and agreed to a new peace force under the United Nations and the African Union.
Rice warned that the major powers would be vigilant to ensure that President Omar el-Beshir makes good on the pledge to allow the deployment of the 20,000-strong hybrid force.
“Those who have been around this crisis for a while are going to work very hard to safeguard against backtracking. We have had circumstances in which we have had agreements before and those agreements have not gone forward,” she said.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also signalled that the patience of the international community over Darfur was wearing thin.
“The international community has been waiting for too long and the people of Darfur suffering for too long,” said the UN chief.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner offered some cause for optimism, saying that there was “a little light at the end of the darkness” following the meeting.
Neither Sudan nor the rebels were invited to the conference while the African Union, which has brokered peace talks between Khartoum and Darfur rebels, did not take part because it sees the meeting as duplicating its own efforts.
France and the United States were joined at the one-day meeting by representatives from China — Sudan's top oil customer and arms supplier — and from Egypt, Japan and Russia and other nations.
Kouchner said the group agreed to meet again in September in New York on the sidelines of the meeting of the UN General Assembly.
At a meeting with participants, President Nicolas Sarkozy called on world powers to take a tough line with Sudan if it refuses to cooperate with efforts to end the conflict.
“Silence kills,” Sarkozy said. “Now we know that the absence of a decision and the absence of a response is unacceptable.”
“Sudan must know that if it cooperates, we will help it greatly and that if it refuses, we will be firm,” he said.
But China's envoy for Sudan told AFP that threats and pressure on Khartoum would be “counterproductive” and argued that world must instead focus on reconstruction aid to alleviate poverty.
“To solve the issue of Darfur, the international community must try to send a positive and balanced signal,” the envoy, Liu Guijin, told AFP on the sidelines of the conference.
“We must not, over any minor shift, threaten and put pressure on the government of Sudan. It would be counterproductive and would only complicate matters further,” said Liu.
Discussion focussed on plans for the new AU-UN force that will bolster the 7,000 ill-equipped AU soldiers who have failed to stop the violence since their deployment in 2004.
Participants also heard of AU and UN efforts to persuade Darfur rebel factions, who have grown from two at the outset to about 18 currently, to enter into peace talks with Khartoum.
The Darfur conflict pits a rebel insurgency against the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum and its proxy militia known as the Janjaweed, whose leader stands accused of war crimes.
At least 200,000 people have been killed and two million driven from their homes since February 2003, according to the United Nations. Khartoum says the figures are exaggerated.
