SUDAN:WHEN JAN Eliasson agreed to be a UN envoy to Darfur, he believed peace for the embattled region of Sudan was within reach.
But after 18 months of shuttle diplomacy, rebel groups are more fractured and violent than ever and the Sudanese government is again engaged in brutal attacks on villages, he told the UN Security Council.
The chance for peace has slipped away for now, he told the council "with much regret", and the focus must revert to restoring security. He scolded all parties in the conflict, including the Security Council and himself, for not doing more to halt the violence. More than two million people have been displaced, and most estimates of the death toll since 2003 exceed 200,000.
Mr Eliasson and his partner in the Darfur peace process, former Tanzanian foreign minister Salim Ahmed Salim, said they would soon step back and leave it to another peacemaker, a yet unnamed African mediator, to try a new strategy for calming one of the world's most complex conflicts. The new mediator will be based full-time in the region, unlike Mr Eliasson and Mr Salim, who were criticised for dropping in periodically for intense talks. Both will stay on in advisory roles.
"For over five years, millions of people have suffered enormously," said Mr Eliasson, a former president of the UN General Assembly and once Sweden's foreign minister. "This simply can't go on."
The deployment of UN and African Union troops to the region has lagged alarmingly because of Sudanese government obstructions, UN bureaucracy and lack of equipment from donor nations, said Mr Eliasson, but the goal of having 16,000 peacekeepers on the ground by year end now seems on track.
Peace talks have stalled because one of the most influential rebel leaders, Abdel Wahid, refused to join in until fighting had stopped, he said.
The UN has been focusing on Darfur too narrowly, Mr Eliasson concluded, and efforts to stabilise the region must also consider the tenuous power-sharing arrangement between Sudan's north and south, as well as how the conflict with neighbouring Chad feeds violence in Darfur.
The Security Council should consider sanctions on any party that impedes peace - rebel or government - as well as incentives to spur action from all parties. An arms embargo should be enforced and perhaps expanded.
Mr Eliasson and Mr Salim recounted their mediation efforts that began in 2007, travelling by propeller plane and helicopter across Darfur to meet with rebel commanders and local government leaders. It was a recitation laced with dashed hopes, bitter hindsight and disappointment.
Last summer brought the greatest moment of hope, when Mr Eliasson and Mr Saleem herded almost all of the key rebel commanders to a meeting in Arusha, Tanzania, to form a united front to sit across the table from Sudan's government.
"I was so hopeful in August," Mr Eliasson said. "I remember leaving Arusha thinking, 'We are really on to something.'" But within weeks, one of the main rebel groups split, leading the movement to fracture into nearly two dozen splinters. At the same time, Sudan's southern faction left the unity government. Peace talks scheduled for the end of October in Libya were up in the air.
Mr Eliasson said that countries with particular influence on Chad or Sudan - like France, China, the US and South Africa - had a responsibility to press for peace.
Security Council members echoed the envoys' message for greater action, but there were few concrete proposals.
South African ambassador Dumisani Kumalo said that even if 200,000 soldiers patrolled the ground and hundreds of helicopters were flying overhead, they could not bring about peace if there was no political agreement.
US ambassador to the UN Zalmay Khalilzad said security was the key, and so perhaps, were sanctions. "I think we have not been, frankly, tough enough with the government of Sudan," he said. - ( LA Times-Washington Post Service)