UN's Ban Meets Sudan Leaders on Darfur Peace Plans

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met Sudanese officials on Thursday for talks focusing on planned peace negotiations over war-ravaged Darfur and arrangements for a massive peacekeeping force to go there.

Ban, who was to see President Omar Hassan al-Bashir later in the day, had morning appointments with top government ministers, parliamentarians and Minni Arcua Minnawi, leader of a Darfur rebel faction that signed a peace deal with Khartoum in 2006.

Ban said on Wednesday he was close to announcing a date and venue for talks between Khartoum and some eight rebel groups over the future of Darfur, where an insurgency erupted in 2003 over alleged government neglect of the west Sudanese region.

Since then, some 200,000 people have died and more than 2 million have been driven from their homes in Darfur, according to estimates by international experts. The Sudanese government says only 9,000 have died.

In July, The U.N. Security Council approved a plan for 26,000 U.N. and African Union peacekeepers to go to Darfur in one of the largest such operations in history. They would take over from an ineffectual AU force of less than 6,000 soldiers.

Ban, who arrived in Khartoum on Monday as part of a six-day regional tour, had a dinner meeting that day with Bashir and later said the Sudanese leader was backing both the negotiations and the peacekeeping mission.

The U.N. chief has said the U.N.-AU force cannot be effective unless "there is a peace to keep" -- highlighting the importance of the planned talks which he has already said he would like to see start some time next month.

Ban has also said the force is dependent on the practical cooperation of Sudanese authorities. Western diplomats say it remains to be seen whether this will be forthcoming when the troops are on the ground.

On Wednesday, Ban visited a refugee camp near the North Darfur capital of El Fasher, where he was mobbed by thousands of cheering people who see the United Nations as a way out of their plight. He visited autonomous south Sudan on Tuesday.

Later in the week he will travel on to Chad and Libya, neighbours of Sudan who U.N. officials say are key to resolving the Darfur issue, partly because of their influence over some of the groups there.