UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - UN Security Council ambassadors departed for a high-profile Africa visit, hoping to bring an end to two separate wars in Sudan despite internal bickering over how to do so.
The 15 council nations were at odds over language in a resolution to be adopted in Nairobi this week on the crisis in Sudan's western Darfur region, the scene of what UN officials call the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
The council is meeting in the Kenyan capital on Thursday and Friday -- only the fourth time it has done so outside New York in more than 50 years -- in a bid to end the long-running, north-south civil war in Sudan.
But there is disagreement over how much pressure to put on the Khartoum government over the separate crisis in Darfur, where an estimated 70,000 people have died since February of last year.
Council ambassadors are planning to adopt a resolution that will press the government and southern rebels to conclude a peace accord by the end of the year -- with hopes that a deal could help ease the Darfur crisis.
The council has already passed two resolutions threatening sanctions against Sudan if it does not rein in the militias behind the Darfur violence, but both passed with abstentions from council heavyweights like China and Russia.
US ambassador John Danforth, the council president for November who organised the mission, insisted there would be a unified voice coming out of the sessions in Nairobi.
"We're all of one mind that this is a very, very important trip," he told reporters after last-minute talks on the resolution.
"It's very important not only for the north-south agreement itself but also to try to bring to an end this terrible disaster in Darfur," he said. "I'm confident all of us are united in that ... it's 99 44/100 percent there."
The resolution dangles the possibility of a development and reconstruction package for Africa's largest nation if a north-south deal can be reached.
"If there is peace in Sudan, the international community is going to be there for Sudan. In other words, it's up to the parties to decide which way they want to go," Danforth said.
Rebels in the Christian and animist south rose up against the Arab-led, Islamic Khartoum government in 1983, and a final accord between the two has seemed close in recent months.
But the final stretch of negotiations has become bogged down in details of a permanent ceasefire and the deployment of various armed forces during a planned six-year, post-war interim period.
Talks between the government and the rebels are set to resume on November 26. Around 1.5 million people are believed to have died in the civil war.
The Security Council will meet with both Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Taha and John Garang, the main southern rebel leader. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is also expected to be on hand.
The international community hopes a deal will help in Darfur, where indigenous rebels staged an uprising in February 2003 that was put down with the help of Arab proxy militias called into service by the government.
The militias have been blamed for a campaign of ethnic cleansing including rape and pillaging.
Some 1.2 million people have been driven from their homes, and the UN's Sudan envoy recently said the Darfur region was slipping into anarchy, with the government no longer in full control of forces in the area.
11/16/2004 - 20:44 GMT - AFP