The partially boycotted talks began today in Libya. Sounds like the start was almost farcical.
Talks on Darfur Open With Partial Boycott by Rebels – washingtonpost.com
Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi hosted the U.N.– and African Union-backed conference just four years after the United Nations lifted sanctions against his country for alleged acts of terror.
Libya‘s agreement to hold the talks in Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte on the country’s scrubby coast, and the participation of other Mideast envoys, had signaled increasing Arab involvement in efforts to end the violence in Darfur.
But Gaddafi’s opening remarks only underscored the sense that the talks were getting off to a troubled start. The best thing that foreign peacemakers and peacekeeping troops could do for Darfur was stay out of it, Gaddafi told an audience that included envoys from the United States, European Union, China and more than 10 other countries and blocs.
"I would have preferred that this conference be the last attempt by the international community to settle this conflict and let the people of Sudan settle it themselves," Gaddafi said in a slow, sonorous 48-minute monologue that went through two shifts of interpreters. While he spoke, the U.N. envoy for Darfur, Jan Eliasson, on the dais next to Gaddafi, stared at his watch and then wrenched it around and around on his wrist.
"I always say, ‘Leave this problem to its own people,’ " Gaddafi said. "We have nothing to do with this. It’s none of our business."
Uhhhh, so why’d you host the conference?
Here’s another article from the Washington Post
From the Bush to a Chandeliered Hotel, a Rebel Takes Talks in Stride – washingtonpost.com
SIRTE, Libya, Oct. 28 — Until 17 days ago, rebel Abdul Majid Dosa was living in the bush of the warring Darfur region of western Sudan. Dosa, 51, would stub out his last cigarette of the day at sunset, he said, so that Sudanese government warplanes wouldn’t see the glow.
His bed was a stretch of arid ground. No tents — "they make us a gift to the bombs," Dosa said. Each night, he would curl up to sleep aside his rebel comrades-in-arms, Kalashnikov and pistol by his side.
Then, one day, Dosa’s cellphone rang: It was the United Nations, he recalled, inviting him to a new round of Darfur peace talks.
So Dosa, a self-described coordinator, legal consultant and gunman for an armed group calling itself the National Reformation and Development Program, flew to N’Djamena, the capital of neighboring Chad. He put on one of the two or three suits his rebel movement keeps on hand there for peace talks. The United Nations put the lanky rebel on another plane to Sirte, Libya, where Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi is hosting peace talks between the Sudanese government and Darfur rebels, chaired by the United Nations and the African Union.
On Sunday, Dosa stood under the glimmering crystal chandeliers of a marble-and-gilt convention hall, site of the talks.
The rebels’ communal brown suit jacket hung off his skeletal frame. His oversize pant legs pooled around his white gym socks. A Lebanese reporter held a giant fuzzy microphone in his face. Two weeks removed from the bush, Dosa was doing a TV stand-up, fighting not to blink under the camera lights as he spoke about the rebel cause.
Doesn’t sound promising.
Leave a Reply