Darfur rebels disappointed by Ban's visit

By Abigail Hauslohner

(Reuters) - Darfur rebel leaders on Friday expressed disappointment with the U.N. Secretary General's visit to Sudan over the last three days and said they had low expectations for peace talks next month.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and the Sudanese government on Thursday set a date and venue for talks between Khartoum and Darfur rebels to push for peace ahead of the deployment of 26,000 peacekeepers in Darfur.


But some rebel leaders said Ban, who visited a Darfur refugee camp during his trip and later met Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, had failed to pressure Sudan to acknowledge key Darfur grievances, which they said would be necessary for the October 27 talks in Libya to succeed.

"(Ban) has not met the expectation of the people of Darfur," a leader of the Sudan Liberation Army, Ahmed Abdel Shafie, told Reuters by telephone from Uganda.

"The U.N. needs to put pressure on Sudan to stop the settlement that is taking place in Darfur. There are new Arab tribes that the government brought from Niger and Chad and the government is settling them in Darfur to change the demography of the region before elections," he said.

"I was shocked the UN did not condemn the government for that behavior ... We expected Ban to take measures to put pressure on Sudan for this issue," he added. Read more >>>>