From SAPA/AFP (also reprinted on Sudan Tribune)...
The Pan-African Parliament (PAP) on Thursday labelled the international community’s role in solving the conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region as unclear and ineffective.
“The role of the international community has not been particularly lucid in Darfur,” said a report by a parliamentary committee on conflict resolution, presented for debate by Swazi parliamentarian Marwick Khumalo.
“If we are to review the actual strategies and divergent interests of the main international actors in the Sudan, it becomes clear that the use of megaphone diplomacy with the National Congress Party has narrowed the margin of engagement rather than broadening it.”
The PAP, an African Union body created three years ago, has no legislative powers and serves an advisory role.
The Darfur conflict between rebels and government forces has caused 200,000 deaths and [has] led to two million people being displaced since February 2003, according to the United Nations. Sudan contests the figures, saying [that] the death toll is 9,000.
The committee report urged the PAP to consider a fact-finding mission to Darfur to assess progress with a peace agreement struck between the Sudanese Liberation Movement and [the] government.
It described the crisis in Somalia as extreme concerning, and asked parliament to lobby the international community to “focus all diplomatic efforts” on an urgent ceasefire.
The committee urged the PAP to call on the Ethiopian government to withdraw its troops from Somalia in order to allow the African Union mission to that country, AMISOM, to play its peacekeeping role.
It also urged African states to commit more troops to the mission.
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