KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Eighteen Sudanese officials have withdrawn from posts in the Darfur region in protest at an attack by armed forces on a camp for displaced people that killed more than 30 people.
The officials are all from a former southern rebel group which signed a peace deal with the northern based government in 2005 to end a conflict that had no direct links to the fighting in Darfur.
"We have agreed to freeze our partnership with the national government. We are waiting in our homes. We are no longer in our positions," Omar Abdul Rahman Adam, minister of agriculture and irrigation for south Darfur state, told Reuters.
"We told them we would have no part in the government. We are not going to see security violating the law when we are part of the government," said Adam.
At least 32 people were killed when armed Sudanese forces raided Kalma camp in south Darfur last week, saying they were searching for weapons, U.N./African Union peacekeepers said. Aid sources said the dead included women and children.
The officials who withdrew from their posts were all members of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), a former southern rebel group that is now in a coalition government with the northern National Congress Party (NCP).
As part of the 2005 peace deal, former rebels took up official posts in Sudan's administration, including in Darfur.
Despite the fracture in the coalition on the ground in Darfur, it was unclear whether the withdrawal of the officials would have any implications at the national level. Senior SPLM officials made no immediate comment.
Adam said the 18 officials would only return to work when they felt the NCP was serious about solving the Darfur conflict. International experts say the conflict has killed 200,000 people and driven more than 2.5 million to refugee camps like Kalma.
Although there is no direct link between the north-south conflict and the one in Darfur, both are rooted in the feeling of marginalisation of people on Sudan's peripheries from traditionally Arab-dominated governments in Khartoum.
Kalma has long been a flashpoint. Sudanese politicians and army officers have regularly accused bandits and rebel groups of using it as a base and a store for weapons and explosives.
A spokesman for Sudan's armed forces said soldiers and police entered Kamla on Monday last week to search for arms and suspects. Government officials later accused the media of exaggerating the death toll.
But the U.N./African Union UNAMID peacekeeping force in Darfur criticised Sudan for using "excessive, disproportionate" force in the raid.
South Darfur's governor Ali Mahmoud told state media on Tuesday the withdrawal of the SPLM ministers and government members was illogical and dismissed it as a "political move".
10:30 - Arts Call For Darfur worthy, worthwhile and worth it
Category: Blogging
Arts Call For Darfur worthy, worthwhile and worth it
by CLARE OGDEN - Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Frech Throw II by David Knight
Aiming to raise money for Save The Children's ongoing aid work, Arts Call For Darfur was launched last December. This exhibition of work donated by Welsh and Sudanese artists will be auctioned in October, but prints of many of the pieces are available to buy now.
The forlorn first-floor gallery space of The Old Library doesn't really show off the work to best advantage, but there are some gems in a collection that varies in quality as well as style. Liz McKernan's fluid nude drawings are appealing in their simplicity, and David Knight's study of a contemplative couple, French Throw II, has a lovely, luminous quality.
Some big Welsh names also weigh in. There's covetable work from Iwan Bala, Sue Williams and Charles Byrd, whose two untitled geometrical abstracts are as glossy and brightly coloured as a box of boiled sweets.
Until Sep 10, The Old Library, Trinity Street, Cardiff. Tue to Sat 9am to 4.30pm, free. Tel: 029 2087 3196. www.artscallfordarfur.org
07:58 - Mia Farrow shows alternative ’Darfur Olympics’
Current mood: angry
Mia Farrow shows alternative 'Darfur Olympics'
Mia Farrow shows alternative 'Darfur Olympics'
1 hour ago
KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) — U.S. actress-activist Mia Farrow aired an "alternative" Olympic opening ceremony in a Web cast Friday, showing Darfur refugees in the barren deserts of eastern Chad playing sports on sandy fields.
The Web cast coincided with a lavish opening ceremony at the Beijing Olympics. The 2 1/2-minute video is part of a campaign by Farrow and other Darfur activists to pressure China into using its leverage in Sudan to bring an end to the five-year conflict.
In the Web cast, Farrow and a child walk into a sandstorm as she holds an extinguished torch. A young Sudanese boy sings: "Sudan is my country. Sudan is the country of my grandmother and grandfather. ... Sudan will always be my home."
Human rights groups, including Farrow's Dream for Darfur, have been using the Beijing Olympics to highlight accusations that China's close ties to the Sudanese government are helping fuel the bloodshed in Darfur, where the U.N. says up to 300,000 people have been killed.
China buys nearly two-thirds of Sudan's oil and is believed to provide Sudan with most of its small arms, many of which human rights groups say end up being used in Sudan's western region of Darfur. Sudan and China deny the charges, but Beijing has resisted tough U.N. Security Council action against Sudan over the conflict.
Each day during the first week of the Beijing games, Farrow plans to post new Web casts with "voices from the camps" in Chad, including interviews with women and children. About 250,000 Darfurians live in the refugee camps in Chad. Another nearly 2.5 million people displaced by the fighting remain in Darfur.
Six artists, including REM, Talib Kweli and The Jones Street Boys, have donated about 20 minutes of recorded concerts that are also posted on Farrow's Web site as part of the alternative ceremony.
Farrow's Dream for Darfur group has called the Olympics the "Genocide Games." China barred a Dream for Darfur member from entering the country. The activist had planned to take the video made by Farrow to reporters in China, where the Web site has been blocked.
10:47 - Check out this event: MI Darfur Coalition Fundraiser @ Max & Erma’s
Hosted By: Michigan Darfur Coalition & Jam for Sudan When: 05 Aug 2008, 17:00 Where Max & Erma's 250 Merrill St. Birmingham, Michigan|23 48009 United States Description: Michigan Darfur Coalition & Jam for Sudan
MSF has had to suspend its suspend activities and evacuate staff from Tawila and Shangil Tobaya in nothern Darfur
..table>NAIROBI, 4 August 2008 (IRIN) - The staff of the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), who were evacuated from two locations in the western Sudanese state of North Darfur, may return to the area if they are assured improved security on the ground, a spokeswoman said.
"It is quite an insecure area to work in," Susan Sandars told IRIN. "We are talking to all parties in the area to seek more clarity on the situation before we can consider returning."
MSF was forced to evacuate staff from Tawila and Shangil Tobaya after several violent assaults, including two in one week, when armed men entered the MSF compounds at night. They threatened staff with guns and stole money, including the salaries of local staff, and other valuables.
The departure of the aid workers has left at least 65,000 people without medical assistance. Most are internally displaced.
"After these violent attacks, we have had to suspend activities and evacuate all our staff from Tawila and Shangil Tobaya," said Mónica Camacho, MSF head of mission in Darfur. "It is impossible for our teams to work and provide medical aid without a minimum guarantee of security and respect for humanitarian work."
The UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes condemned the attacks.
"The armed opposition groups in Darfur have a clear obligation to guarantee the personal and physical security of relief workers and access to vulnerable populations," he said in a statement. "The Sudanese government has a responsibility to ensure security throughout their territory."
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 180 humanitarian vehicles have been hijacked in Darfur this year, 145 aid workers kidnapped and nine killed.
"We are continuing to work in other areas of Darfur," Sandars said on 4 August. "But when incidents like this happen, our immediate response is to assess the safety of our staff."
In June, humanitarian workers said the situation for aid agencies in Darfur had deteriorated, reducing their ability to reach people in need to an 18-month low.
"When it comes to hijackings, compound invasions, office invasions, attacks on humanitarians, abduction of humanitarians - in the first six months of this year the statistics are the same as for all of last year," Mike McDonagh, head of OCHA Sudan, said.
Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir greeting Unamid officials in Darfur last week. He dismissed accusations of genocide. Photograph: Stuart Price/AFP/Getty
The UN-led Darfur peacekeeping mission is on the "brink of failure" because barely a third of the troops promised to it have been deployed, according to a report released today by more than 50 Africa-focused NGOs.
A year ago this week, the UN Security Council approved a 26,000-strong force to take over from the failing African Union-led operation in western Sudan.
But since officially deploying on January 1, the joint UN-AU mission, known as Unamid, has added only 600 troops and policeman, leaving the force with 9,479 uniformed peacekeepers.
The report by the Darfur Consortium says the Unamid mission has achieved no more than its predecessor in protecting civilians, humanitarian workers and its own soldiers.
From January to June, more than 190,000 people were displaced in Darfur and there were more hijackings of aid vehicles than in the whole of 2007. Seven Unamid soldiers were killed in an ambush this month.
Dismas Nkunda, spokesperson for the Darfur Consortium, said the international community was guilty of "empty words and broken promises".
"One year ago the UN security council stood unanimous and promised Darfurians the strongest and largest protection force ever. The truth is stark but simple, the international community's failure to act is costing lives."
The report says a glaring example of the lack of resources allocated to the Unamid mission is the fact that many of the former AU peacekeepers did not even receive the blue helmets denoting a UN operation.
Instead, they had to paint their old helmets, or tie blue plastic bags around them. The force is short of 18 transport helicopters, four tactical helicopters, and six armoured personnel carriers.
The report's authors say that Sudan's government, whose central role in the five-year crisis was highlighted by the war crimes charges levelled by the international criminal court against the Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir, this month, had stalled troop deployment and the clearance of equipment through customs.
The UN and AU security councils were criticised for allowing this to happen, while donor nations and troop-contributing countries were accused of failing to fulfil pledges to support the mission.
The peacekeepers could be doing more to protect the more than 4 million vulnerable people in Darfur, the report says. It highlights three recent attacks on civilians and aid workers by government troops and militias where nearby Unamid forces had failed to react with force, as their mandate allows
02:40 - The case for international justice as seen from Darfur
Category: News and Politics
The case for international justice as seen from Darfur
As told to Susan Elderkin
Published: July 26 2008 02:00 | Last updated: July 26 2008 02:00
Ahmed – not his real name – is a Sudanese interpreter for the International Criminal Court, working on its investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
I'm pleased they've issued an arrest warrant for Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir. I've been to refugee camps in Chad three times as an interpreter for the ICC. I know exactly what evidence they've got, and it's strong. But it'll take time. For now it's just talking.
My first trip to Chad was in 2006. It was the first time I'd been back to Africa since I fled to the UK as an asylum-seeker in 2001. I had been tortured, and members of my family were killed. Stepping off the plane in Enjamina, I had mixed emotions. I had never been to Chad before, but it looks pretty much like Darfur – flat and dry. It smelt of my childhood – dry grass, the smoke from cooking fires. And the people look the same – the men in long white djallabas, the women dressed in reds and oranges and yellows.
I'm from Darfur in western Sudan. The ICC needed people who speak the local languages in Darfur – Zagawa, Fur and Massaliet. I was travelling with a group of investigators – six or seven of them. They were from all over: Australia, Canada, France, Nigeria, Uganda. We never discussed the political situation, or what had happened to me. We had to remain strictly neutral. We talked about football.
We would set up a table and chairs in a temporary building in the refugee camps, or under a tree in the shade. Then we'd collect personal testimonies. We'd work from 11am until 4pm, the hot part of the day. Some of the investigators suffered in the heat, but I didn't. Some had stomach trouble and had to be flown home. People were telling us things – many bad things. Villages being burnt, people being burned alive, buried alive, women and girls raped in front of their fathers. People being shot.
I could imagine it all because I had seen these things myself. Having to repeat everything I heard, word for word, was almost like experiencing it again. It was very hard. As an interpreter you can't allow yourself to get emotional. Sometimes I had to ask for a break.
One day, one of the men from my father's village came. I couldn't believe how changed he was. The last time I saw him he was strong, upbeat. Now he was thin, grey, quiet; suffering on his face.
He didn't know who I was. I said: "What happened to you that you can't even remember my father?" When he remembered, he wept. "Life," he said. "Life did this to me."
The second time I was there, I found my mother in one of the camps. I hadn't even known that she was alive. I gave her money and arranged for her to go back home. Now I speak to her every week on the phone.
Being an asylum-seeker in England was tough – the poverty, the isolation, the constant fear of being sent home. It taught me how to keep strong, not to let my anger come out. If I hadn't been through this, I wouldn't have been able to cope in Chad.
If the perpetrators are not brought to justice, it will be a complete failure on the part of the international community. Because so many crimes were committed, and the international community already failed once to protect innocent people.
.. --> E IIMA -->As the United Nations withdraws all of its non-essential staff from the war-torn Sudanese region of Darfur, one UN worker, who wishes to remain anonymous, describes the mood at the headquarters in El Fasher.
I have been in Darfur for one year working as part of the mission support staff. They told us that non-emergency staff are being evacuated and I am going to have to be relocated to Entebbe in Uganda on Tuesday. Others are being moved to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia.
I will just take my evacuation baggage - I am only allowed to take 15 kilos.
At the moment everyone is scared. One of my neighbours found a bullet in the gate of the house that he rents, so we decided it is better to sleep in our office.
The situation is very tense. People are very scared because they don't know what is going to happen.
Yesterday we did an evacuation exercise and practiced moving into the shelters here.
I would say that news of the indictment has definitely led to instability.
Since the announcement about the indictment the rebels have been happy. I think they will provoke the Sudanese who will take reprisals. They won't do this officially but they will do it using the Janjaweed militia.
Unamid (the UN force) is still very under-equipped. It is really still the African Union force - it has just changed its name - that is all.
Of the 9,000 troops here about 700 are being relocated. The rest is expected to stay.
Our movements are restricted. There was a big demonstration in Khartoum against the indictment of President Bashir. There was also a smaller one in El Fasher but we were not able to go there.
We are now at what they call here 'phase 4' whereby all non-essential staff leave (we were at 'phase 3' which meant there were curfews). But if it gets worse, we will move to 'phase 5' where they close the mission completely and leave.
I am worried that there will be attacks against UN personnel. We are scared of the rebels and the Janjaweed. It is very difficult to distinguish between them and know who is attacking you.
.. --> S IBOX -->
..tr>
The whole mission has been a mess. No-one knows what they are doing. Only after some UN staff were attacked recently did they start to keep us better informed
..table>.. --> E IBOX -->I think an all out conflict could break out. The IDPs (Internally Displaced People) living in the camps could be under threat from attack.
The worst case scenario is that the Sudanese forces start to bomb villages as they did before. Then the rebels might respond and the militia will respond and in the confusion the UN would just pack up everything and go.
This whole mission has been a mess. No one knows what they are doing. Only after some UN staff were attacked recently did they start to keep us better informed.
Even our camp cannot accommodate all the staff. The emergency shelters are not big enough for everyone.
We have a lot of resources but I would say that 80% is spent on UN staff and not on the Darfuris who we are supposed to be protecting and helping. The money is spent on cars and accommodation for the UN.
If you complain and say it is a mess - they just say "Yes it's a mess, it's the UN!"
I am very disappointed. I came here because I wanted to help people but I have found a big bureaucracy. If you do well you might get a pat on the back but if things don't work they blame you.
I think they have to change their strategy and get serious because right now it's a complete mess. .. --> E BO -->
10:55 - Sudan president charged with genocide in Darfur
Sudan president charged with genocide in Darfur
By MIKE CORDER – 20 hours ago
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The prosecutor for the International Criminal Court sought an arrest warrant Monday for Sudan's president on charges of waging a campaign of genocide and rape in Darfur, a high-risk strategy that could backfire against the people in the war-torn desert region.
The indictment marked the first time prosecutors at the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal have issued charges against a sitting head of state, though President Omar al-Bashir was unlikely to face trial any time soon.
Sudan denounced the indictment as a political stunt, saying it would ignore any arrest order and was considering all options, including an unspecified military response. One Sudanese lawmaker said his government could no longer guarantee the safety of U.N. staff in the troubled region.
Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo filed 10 charges against al-Bashir related to a campaign of extermination of three Darfur tribes that the U.N. says claimed 300,000 lives and driven 2.5 million people from their homes. A three-judge panel was expected to take two to three months to decide whether to issue an arrest warrant.
Human rights groups welcomed the prosecutor's move, but cautioned it could provoke a violent backlash from Sudan, while offering little prospect that al-Bashir will be arrested and sent for trial to The Hague. The court, which began work in 2002, has no enforcement arm and relies on governments to act as its police force.
"The prosecutor's legal strategy also poses major risks for the fragile peace and security environment in Sudan, with a real chance of greatly increasing the suffering of very large numbers of its people," the Brussels-based International Crisis Group said in a statement.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Sudan's ambassador to the United Nations, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamed, said al-Bashir was weighing all options, including a military response.
Al-Bashir likely will attend the U.N. General Assembly in New York in September, and Sudan would consider any attempt to arrest him a declaration of war, Mohamed said.
In Khartoum, the deputy parliament speaker, Mohammed al-Hassan al-Ameen, warned Sudan was unable to guarantee "the safety of any individual."
"The U.N. asks us to keep its people safe, but how can we guarantee their safety when they want to seize our head of state?" al-Ameen said on state TV.
Sudan's anger could undermine talks to resolve the decades-old enmity between north and south Sudan, and endanger efforts by relief workers and an ill-equipped U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force to protect 2.5 million people living in refugee camps, the Crisis Group said.
"These are significant risks, particularly given that the likelihood of actually executing any warrant issued against al-Bashir is remote, at least in the short term," it added.
Al-Bashir, who has ruled Sudan for 19 years, appears invulnerable in his capital, though an international warrant would leave him open to arrest outside the country's borders, restricting his travel and putting him in a category akin to Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, who faces a U.N. travel ban.
Still, African nations have rarely taken action against one of their leaders, and al-Bashir is likely to feel few constraints on his own continent.
On Monday, the Sudanese leader appeared at an elaborate law-signing ceremony in Khartoum, where dozens of lawmakers, diplomats and military leaders paraded past him cheering. Al-Bashir waved a wooden cane and smiled as advisers danced and a brass band played nationalist songs.
Moreno-Ocampo acknowledged the risks posed by an indictment, but said he had an obligation to pursue the president.
"I am a prosecutor doing a judicial case," he said. "In the camps, al-Bashir's forces kill the men and rape the women. He wants to end the history of the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa people. I don't have the luxury to look away. I have evidence."
The 10 charges filed against al-Bashir include three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and two of war crimes.
The Sudanese Liberation Movement-Unity, a Darfur rebel group, welcomed the move and offered to help arrest and extradite any war criminals from Sudan — though it is unlikely the rebels would stand any chance of arresting al-Bashir.
If Sudan refuses to turn over al-Bashir, it will be up to the U.N. Security Council to press Khartoum to cooperate, something it has so far failed to do.
"Prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo's charges against al-Bashir underscore the need for the U.N. Security Council to finally act decisively with a comprehensive strategy for Sudan," said Jerry Fowler, president of the Save Darfur Coalition.
Achieving unanimous backing in the Security Council for any action against Sudan will be fraught with problems since two of its permanent members, China and Russia, are Sudan's allies.
Both are accused of arming Sudan, but both also approved the council's 2005 resolution ordering Moreno-Ocampo to investigate crimes in Darfur.
In a statement, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said he "expects that the government of Sudan will continue to cooperate fully with the United Nations in Sudan, while fulfilling its obligation to ensure the safety and security of all United Nations personnel and property."
The war in Darfur began in 2003 as a crackdown on anti-government rebels who complained their arid region was neglected by Khartoum. The U.N. estimates 300,000 people have died, directly from attacks or indirectly through starvation.
Moreno-Ocampo said Sudan's forces and their janjaweed militia proxies now deliberately target civilians in villages and camps rather than the rebels, sometimes even bypassing nearby rebel encampments.
They destroy villages, rape women and girls and leave the homeless to starve in the desert or suffer malnutrition in camps, he alleged.
"These 2.5 million people are in camps. They (al-Bashir's forces) don't need gas chambers because the desert will kill them," Moreno-Ocampo told a news conference, drawing comparison's with the Nazi Holocaust.
One witness cited by prosecutors said rape was woven into the fabric of life in Darfur.
"Maybe around 20 men rape one woman. These things are normal for us here in Darfur," said the statement from the unidentified witness cited by Moreno-Ocampo.
The prosecutor said mass rape was producing a generation of so-called "janjaweed babies" and "an explosion of infanticide" by victims.
Moreno-Ocampo said an arrest warrant for al-Bashir would present the world a chance to stop the killings.
"We are dealing with a genocide. Is it easy to stop? No. Do we need to stop? Yes," he told the AP in an interview Monday before publicly unveiling his indictment.
"The international community failed in the past, failed to stop Rwanda genocide, failed to stop Balkans crimes," he added. "So this time, the new thing is there is a court, an independent court ... which is saying, 'This is a genocide.'"
Other U.N.-created international tribunals have charged Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and Liberian President Charles Taylor with war crimes while they were still in office. Milosevic died in his cell in March 2006. Taylor is currently on trial in The Hague for crimes against humanity in Sierra Leone.
Associated Press writers Mohamed Osman in Khartoum, Sudan; John Heilprin at the United Nations and Desmond Butler in Washington contributed to this report.
Many refugees and displaced Chadians in the east rely on humanitarian aid to survive.
..table>DAKAR, 11 July 2008 (IRIN) - Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) Oxfam and Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) have suspended their activities in Kerfi, near Goz Beida in eastern Chad, following attacks on the staff and compounds of several NGOs, both agencies announced in press statements on 10 July.
During the night of 9 July six armed men shot several times and attempted without success to burn down a house where Oxfam's staff were hiding, the organisation announced in a statement, adding that ensuing clashes between the Chadian army and the armed attackers resulted in the death of at least one man and the injuries of several others.
"We are deeply concerned by [this] attack and the implication this could have on our ability to provide critical [help]", Roland Van Hauwermeiren, Oxfam-GB's country director, announced in the statement. The NGO provides water and sanitation to over 11,000 people in Kerfi. "Insecurity remains a constant problem in Chad and the Chad government should work to curtail the environment of impunity which permeates this region," it continued.
MSF-Holland also announced the suspension of its activities on 10 July in the same town, following an attack against its health facility on 8 July by dozens of young men who beat up several staff members and patients.
Populations of this area of eastern Chad close to the Sudan border, have been the target of several attacks over the last months, according to UN officials. But in the case of the latest attacks, although the motives are unknown the MSF statement declared "it appears that NGOs are being intentionally targeted."
"The area] is very poor, there is not enough food, [whereas] NGOs have money and cars," Karline Kleijer, head of MSF-Holland mission in Chad, told IRIN. "But this time, there is nothing to do with that. To attack a health facility is quite extreme. Staff and patients have been beaten up; this has nothing to do with money".
NGOs are working to help Sudanese refugees, internally displaced people and local populations in the region.
Oxfam and MSF staff have been temporarily evacuated and relocated to Goz Beida, an hour away from Kerfi, from where many aid agencies operate. Some of MSF's patients have also been transferred to Goz Beida, but the medical organisation expressed concern for the 3,000 patients it has been treating each month, and the 200 children who receive its nutritional support.
"I don't see us coming back within the next few weeks," Kleijer said. "If we are targeted, it will be difficult to justify. They have to find a way to control [this violence]."
More than 10,000 displaced people live and around the town of Kerfi, in addition to the existing 8,000 inhabitants. Overall, about 250,000 Sudanese refugees from Darfur and over 100,000 displaced Chadians are currently living in eastern Chad.
Djibril Bassole last year helped broker a peace deal in Ivory Coast
..
<!-- E IIMA --><!-- S SF -->
The United Nations and the African Union (AU) have appointed the Burkina Faso Foreign Minister, Djibril Bassole, as their new Darfur peace envoy.
The UN said Mr Bassole will conduct efforts to mediate between the Sudanese government and Darfur rebels from the region's city of Fasher.
He replaces current UN and AU envoys Jan Eliasson and Salim Ahmed Salim.
Recent peace efforts have faltered - armed men held 38 peacekeepers at gunpoint for five hours on Monday. <!-- E SF -->
The UN says Mr Bassole, 51, has extensive experience in conflict mediation, having played an important role in negotiating the peace agreement signed last year by the government of Ivory Coast and the New Forces rebels.
<!-- S IIMA -->
..
..
<!-- E IIMA -->
Mr Eliasson and Mr Salim last week questioned whether the armed groups were committed to ending the conflict.
Talks have been complicated recently because the rebels have split into more than a dozen factions.
The UN and AU have a joint peacekeeping force in Darfur. But it has just 9,000 of the planned 26,000 troops.
The violence in Darfur began in 2003 when rebel groups complaining of discrimination against black Africans began attacking government targets.
The government mobilised what it called "self-defence militias" in response, but denies any links to the Janjaweed, accused of trying to "cleanse" black Africans from Darfur.
<!-- S BO --><!-- S IIMA -->
..
Djibril Bassole last year helped broker a peace deal in Ivory Coast
..
<!-- E IIMA --><!-- S SF -->
The United Nations and the African Union (AU) have appointed the Burkina Faso Foreign Minister, Djibril Bassole, as their new Darfur peace envoy.
The UN said Mr Bassole will conduct efforts to mediate between the Sudanese government and Darfur rebels from the region's city of Fasher.
He replaces current UN and AU envoys Jan Eliasson and Salim Ahmed Salim.
Recent peace efforts have faltered - armed men held 38 peacekeepers at gunpoint for five hours on Monday. <!-- E SF -->
The UN says Mr Bassole, 51, has extensive experience in conflict mediation, having played an important role in negotiating the peace agreement signed last year by the government of Ivory Coast and the New Forces rebels.
<!-- S IIMA -->
..
..
<!-- E IIMA -->
Mr Eliasson and Mr Salim last week questioned whether the armed groups were committed to ending the conflict.
Talks have been complicated recently because the rebels have split into more than a dozen factions.
The UN and AU have a joint peacekeeping force in Darfur. But it has just 9,000 of the planned 26,000 troops.
The violence in Darfur began in 2003 when rebel groups complaining of discrimination against black Africans began attacking government targets.
The government mobilised what it called "self-defence militias" in response, but denies any links to the Janjaweed, accused of trying to "cleanse" black Africans from Darfur.
Currently
listening
:
WARchild
By
Emmanuel JAL
Release date: 2008-05-13
angry
strong
E-mail this to a friend 
Printable version 
I have been in Darfur for one year working as part of the mission support staff. They told us that non-emergency staff are being evacuated and I am going to have to be relocated to Entebbe in Uganda on Tuesday. Others are being moved to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. 
The whole mission has been a mess. No-one knows what they are doing. Only after some UN staff were attacked recently did they start to keep us better informed 
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