( AP ) - Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is in Sudan to "give a push" for a new round of talks to end the four-year regional conflict and mobilize support for the speedy deployment of a new 26,000-member peacekeeping force, a top U.N. official said Monday.
Ban was expected to have dinner with President Omar al-Bashir before heading to southern Sudan on Tuesday to assess implementation of the 2005 agreement that ended a separate 21-year civil war between Sudan's Muslim government in the north and the mostly Christian southern rebels.
He was then due Wednesday in Darfur to visit a camp for some of the 2.5 million people displaced by the conflict there, which has claimed more than 200,000 lives.
"It is important to move on several fronts," Jean-Marie Guehenno, the U.N. undersecretary-general for peacekeeping, told reporters traveling with Ban. This is why the secretary-general has come to Sudan at this time, he said.
Ban will "give a push" for launching a new round of negotiations between splintered rebel groups and the government to end the protracted conflict in the western Darfur region. U.N. officials hope the talks will get under way in October.
"If those negotiations are not inclusive and successful, it will be very hard to have a successful peacekeeping mission," Guehenno said. "Like any peacekeeping situation, it needs a solid political foundation. It needs an agreement that everybody buys into."
Deploying the new African Union-U.N. "hybrid" force to replace the beleaguered 7,000-member AU force now on the ground in Darfur will need "the full cooperation of the government of Sudan ... and the secretary-general will wish for that, too," he said.
When Ban visits Juba in southern Sudan, Guehenno said, he will be sending "an important signal" about the need to "re-energize" the north-south agreement. "It is fragile," he said, citing delays in preparations for elections in 2009, and on redeploying Sudanese forces from the south.
A senior U.N. official traveling with Ban stressed the importance of making sure that the north-south agreement is not breaking down.
"I don't even want to give the impression that it is breaking down. I just say we have to make sure that agreement is holding," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issues.
Ban said he chose this time to make the weeklong trip - which will include stops in Chad and Libya - because of the "historic opportunity" provided by the U.N. Security Council's July 31 resolution authorizing the hybrid force.
"I want to create the foundations of a lasting peace and security," Ban said last week. "My goal is to lock in the progress we have made so far, to build on it so that this terrible trauma may one day cease."
Sudan's U.N. Ambassador Abdelmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamed, who greeted Ban on his arrival in Khartoum, told The Associated Press that "we expect the visit to strengthen the relations between Sudan and the United Nations, and to give more emphasis on the peace process."
Mohamed called efforts to help Sudan implement the north-south agreement and last year's Darfur Peace Agreement, which has not been implemented because only one rebel group signed on, "quite good."
"The ball is in the court of the U.N. to provide for the funding of the hybrid operation" in Darfur, Mohamed also said.
The violence in Darfur has left more than 200,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced since ethnic African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated central government in 2003, accusing it of discrimination. Sudan is accused of retaliating by unleashing Arab militias known as the janjaweed and responsible for much of the violence. The government denies the accusations, but the International Criminal Court in The Hague has charged a Cabinet minister and an alleged janjaweed chief with 51 crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Since taking the reins of the United Nations on Jan. 1, Ban has made Darfur a priority, working behind the scenes to help win approval for the hybrid force and trying to revive negotiations among the warring parties.