Sudan invited to brief UN Security Council on Darfur

Reuters' Irwin Arieff report 23 Aug 2006 - excerpt:

Arab League UN Observer Yahya Mahmassani said he had pressed [UN Security Council President] Effah-Apenteng to hold the planned council meeting [scheduled for next Monday] behind closed doors, so that participants could speak frankly.

"An open meeting is very bad. If they want to do something, let's have a closed meeting (or) everyone speaks to the media, to the street," he said.

The goal of such a meeting should be to convince Khartoum to accept a UN force, he said. "If you can, give them some guarantees, give them some explanation, don't give them a diktat," he said.

One wonders what he means by "guarantees". For a UN force not to arrest any of the 51 people on UN/ICC list of suspected Darfur war criminals?