By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS, June 24 (Reuters) - Top U.N. and African Union envoys on Tuesday called for an international summit on the 5-year-old conflict in Darfur to pressure Sudan and rebel groups to end violence and restart stalled peace talks. In a bleak report to the U.N. Security Council on the situation in Darfur, U.N. 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." Eliasson and his African Union counterpart Salim Ahmed Salim said international organizations, the 15 members of the Security Council and other U.N. 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. "As a new approach is required in dealing with this crisis, such a meeting will provide a unique opportunity for reflection, consideration and action," Salim told the council. 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 U.N.-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. Salim made it clear that negotiations between Khartoum and the rebels had ground to a halt."The political process has reached an impasse," Salim said. "There is a need to rethink the strategy on the way forward." In a new report on UNAMID, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said last month's attack by the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) on Omdurman, a suburb of Khartoum, was "a stark reminder that peace in Darfur remains elusive." "The JEM attack on Omdurman and the continued fighting between rebel groups and the government and its allied forces indicate that the parties are not ready for serious talks," Ban said in his report to the Security Council. Since the attack, the government has been reluctant to talk to JEM, which Khartoum says is backed by Chad. ESCALATING VIOLENCE International experts estimate that some 200,000 people have died and another 2.5 million been left homeless because of the conflict in Darfur. Khartoum says 10,000 have died. Eliasson and Salim both listed several things that must happen if there was to be peace in Darfur. First of all, the 2005 peace deal between northern and southern Sudan that ended two decades of civil war must be fully implemented so that the Sudanese government could show it is a trustworthy partner. Secondly, Chad and Sudan needed to normalize relations and put an end to the escalating violence, they said. Both Chad and Sudan accuse each other of supporting rebel groups that oppose the other's government. Finally, peace talks must resume and UNAMID must be fully deployed. Western countries have blamed Khartoum for the slow deployment, accusing it of handpicking nationalities and blocking non-African contingents. But U.N. officials complain that troop-contributing countries have failed to provide essential hardware, such as helicopters, which UNAMID need to travel across Darfur, a region roughly the size of France. Salim warned the council that even if all 26,000 UNAMID troops were deployed in Darfur, they would not bring calm to western Sudan if the government and rebels did not want peace. (Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
A boy rides a bicycle on the ruins of collapsed buildings during the May 12 Earthquake in Dujiangyan, Sichuan province June 23, 2008. China's pledged 70 billion yuan ($10.2 billion) fund ...
