UN and African Union (AU) envoys today called for an international summit on the five-year-old conflict in Darfur to put pressure Sudan and rebel groups to end violence and restart stalled peace talks.
In a bleak report to the UN Security Council on Darfur, UN special envoy Jan Eliasson said there was "reason to seriously question whether the parties are ready to sit down at the negotiation table and make the compromises necessary for peace".
Mr Eliasson and his AU counterpart, Salim Ahmed Salim, said international organisations, the 15 members of the Security Council and other UN member states should pressure the government and rebels to end hostilities and make peace.
They said that a "high-level international meeting" including Sudan, Security Council countries, other major powers and African states, as well as probably the rebels, might help force Khartoum and the rebels to make peace.
Mr Eliasson said a summit would provide an opportunity for countries to use their influence and "bilateral leverage" to pressure Khartoum and the rebels to resume peace talks.
Human rights activists have called on China to use its substantial influence to push Khartoum to remove obstacles to the full deployment of a UN-AU peacekeeping force, known as UNAMID, in Darfur.
So far only 9,000 of the planned 26,000 UNAMID troops and police are on the ground in western Sudan.