U.N. Chief Heads to Libya

SIRTE, Libya - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Saturday his goal is to reach a final political settlement to end the four-year conflict in Darfur, as he arrived in the hometown of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to discuss upcoming peace negotiations.

Ban announced Thursday that Libya will host the talks set for Oct. 27 and he again praised the country's important mediating role in organizing two meetings with Darfur rebel groups earlier this year. The U.N. chief also made clear he wants these negotiations to produce results.

"First and foremost, we must have (the) Tripoli meeting a success," Ban said. "We'd like to make it the final phase of political negotiations. That's our goal. We'll all try our best efforts."

Ban's stop in Libya was the last in a three-nation tour to promote an end to the protracted conflict in Sudan's Darfur region.

More than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been uprooted since ethnic African rebels in Darfur took up arms against the Arab-dominated Sudanese government in 2003, accusing it of decades of neglect. Sudan's government is accused of retaliating by unleashing a militia of Arab nomads known as the janjaweed - a charge it denies.

The secretary-general, who has made peace in Darfur a top priority since taking the reins of the U.N. on Jan. 1, spent four days in Sudan - including a brief visit to a camp for some of the millions forced to flee their homes. He then flew to Chad, which has been seriously affected by the spillover of the Darfur violence.

U.N. envoy Jan Eliasson and African Union envoy Salim Ahmed Salim have been spearheading international efforts to get the key Darfur players back to the negotiating table and will be mediating the negotiations in Libya.

The new negotiations follow a U.N. and AU conference in Arusha, Tanzania, in early August that brought Darfur rebels together to agree on a common platform for talks on issues such as power- and wealth-sharing, security, land and humanitarian issues.

Seven major rebel leaders came, but there was one important holdout - Abdel Wahid Nur, who leads a major faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement and wants the fighting to stop before negotiations start.

Nur also has rejected the latest proposed round of talks.

Asked whether Gadhafi could use his influence to bring Nur on board, Ban said "we may need (to) use all possible resources including leader Gadhafi, and we have some ideas."

The secretary-general also emphasized the importance of support for the talks from regional players such as Egypt, Eritrea, Chad and Libya.

This will be Ban's third meeting with the Libyan leader, following a visit in his capacity as the South Korean foreign minister and one soon after he became U.N. secretary-general in January.

"I am interested in visiting Sirte and meeting him in different atmosphere," Ban said about the meeting Gadhafi in his hometown. "That will make, I think, (the meeting) much more friendlier and we can build a much closer relationship."

During Ban's stopover in Chad, he discussed with President Idriss Deby a yearlong, 3,000-strong U.N.-mandated European Union mission to protect Sudanese refugees and other civilians in the affected parts of Chad and Central African Republic.

The EU force's mandate would be to protect refugees, internally displaced people and civilians at risk in eastern Chad and northeastern Central African Republic and to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid.

The force planned for Chad and Central African Republic is in addition to a 26,000-strong African Union-U.N. peacekeeping force for Darfur that is to replace a smaller, ineffectual mission of only African Union troops. Sudan on Thursday pledged "to facilitate the timely deployment" of the troops.

"There is high expectation and almost consensus among the major players including in the Security Council, that we need to deploy these multi dimensional forces as soon as possible," Ban said.

"I am happy with this initiative and we need to expedite this process," he said about the EU force for Chad. "Maybe, preferably during the month of September, we will be able to take some action," he said.