Annan to co-chair donors' meeting to bolster African Union mission in Darfur

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan will co-chair a high-level donors' meeting later this month on the African Union's mission in the Darfur region of western Sudan, where for the past two years the Government, its allied militias and rebel forces have been waging a war that has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and forced some 2 million people to flee their homes.

Mr. Annan's co-chair at the 26 May meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – headquarters for the African Union – will be AU Commission Chairperson Alpha Oumar Konare.

A UN spokesperson in New York said the meeting is meant to support all of the areas in which the AU Mission in Sudan (AMIS) is lacking and to try to bring as much international support as possible to end the suffering in Darfur.

Yesterday the Security Council heard a briefing on Mr. Annan's report on UN backing for AMIS, and called for more support for that mission. It also applauded the Union's decision to expand its deployment to more than 7,000 troops.

Also this week two senior UN officials – Mr. Annan's Special Adviser Lakhdar Brahimi and the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Marie Guéhenno – began weeklong visits to assess the situation in Africa's largest country.

Meanwhile, a contingent of some 200 Nepalese soldiers arrived yesterday in Sudan as deployment of a 10,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission to enforce the peace accord ending a separate conflict in the country's south began gaining momentum.

An engineering battalion from Bangladesh is scheduled to follow the Nepalese group next week, while another battalion from India is expected to arrive by the end of the month.

The Security Council voted unanimously in March to send 10,000 troops and 715 civilian police to southern Sudan for an initial period of six months to support January's peace accord ending more than two decades of conflict between the Government and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A).

The peacekeepers of the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS), as part of a considerable mandate, will monitor and verify the ceasefire agreement, help set up a disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programme for ex-combatants, and promote national reconciliation and human rights.