UN's Ban Visits Libya to Spur Action on Darfur

SIRTE, Libya - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon flew to Libya on Saturday for a meeting with leader Muammar Gaddafi to discuss Libya's role as a mediator in an upcoming Darfur peace conference.

The north African state will host a meeting on Oct. 27 between the Sudanese government and Darfur rebel movements that the U.N. hopes will end their four-year-old conflict, Ban announced in Khartoum on Thursday.

Ban had originally planned to fly to the Libyan capital Tripoli but was asked by the Libyan government to land in Sirte, Gaddafi's hometown, U.N. officials said, making a meeting with the leader almost certain.

"Tripoli has been taking important initiatives...They have experience and they know how to arrange all this kind of mediating role," said Ban, on the last leg of a six-day African tour focusing on the violence in the western Sudanese region.

"We'd like to have such a mediating role fully used."

"I am interested in visiting Sirte and meeting him (Gaddafi) in a different atmosphere." referring to the fact of being on Gaddafi's home turf. "That will make it I think much friendlier and we can build a much closer relationship."

Ban's only previous meeting with Gaddafi as Secretary-General was in Addis Ababa in January.

The peace conference in Libya would seek to end a conflict that has generated one of the world's worst humanitarian crises and sparked U.S. accusations -- dismissed by Sudan -- of genocide. Much of the killing, rape and looting has been blamed on a government-allied militia known as the Janjaweed.

International experts estimate some 200,000 people have died and over 2 million have been made homeless in Darfur since an uprising against alleged government neglect of the region flared in 2003. Khartoum puts the death toll at 9,000.

The United Nations- and African Union-hosted talks will aim to push for peace before 26,000 peacekeepers deploy there, the United Nations and Khartoum say.

Libya's hosting of the gathering marks another step in its re-emergence on the world stage after years in which it was ostracised by the West for alleged sponsorship of terrorism and pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.

The U.N. chief's visit to Libya is in acknowledgement of Gaddafi's role in seeking to bring Darfur's fractious rebel groups together, diplomats say.

Gaddafi, who promotes African solutions to African conflicts, has hosted several meetings among Darfur's rebel groups and also sought to broker peace between feuding neighbours Chad and Sudan.

But he consistently denounced non-African involvement in peacekeeping in Africa as a new form of colonialism and regards Sudan and Chad as his diplomatic turf.