Darfur: EU and partners will give AU all the support they need and produce a road map for their peace process

This sounds like good news. IRNA reports that European Union High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana told reporters after a series of meetings held in Brussels today that, quote:

"We cannot maintain the situation in Darfur as it is now. We have to give to the African Union all the support they need. We have to produce a road map for their peace process."

Photo: Alpha Oumar Konare, Javier Solana and Louis Michel address a joint news conference after discussing the situation in Sudan, in Brussels March 8, 2006. (Reuters/ST).

Alpha Oumar Konare, Chairman of the African Union (AU) Commission, Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, Vice-President of Sudan, Robert B. Zoellick, US Deputy Secretary of State, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Peace-keeping Operations attended the meetings.

Konare said he was very satisfied to see "that our partners will support the political process and the establishment of the road map."

Note, the meetings come a day ahead of the multi-national Sudan Consortium meeting to be hosted by the World Bank on Thursday in Paris to discuss the financial needs caused by the conflicts in Sudan.



Photo: Alpha Oumar Konare, Chairman of the African Union Commission is seen prior a meeting at the EU headquarters in Brussels, Wednesday 8 March 2006. The havoc in Darfur, in western Sudan, where some 400,000 people are reported to have been killed and more than two million displaced, is worsening at an alarming rate. The chaos has been spreading west into neighboring Chad for the past few years as more than 200,000 Sudanese have fled across the border from Darfur into eastern Chad. (EPA/OLIVIER HOSLET)

Sudan Tribune reports today that the above discussions were notably to focus on plans to the transfer to UN control of an African Union-run peacekeeping mission in the western region, torn by ethnic conflict since 2003.

"We are going ... to get very serious on Sudan," EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said on the eve of the talks.



As well as the continuing violence in Darfur, they were also discussing problems with Sudan's North-South peace agreement, in particular discord over oil revenues, as well as relations between Sudan and Chad.

"Peace in the whole of Sudan is vital, not only for this big country - the biggest in Africa - but also for the entire African continent and the Arab world," said Solana.

Update: VOA news - EU Offers Support to African Peace Efforts in Darfur.