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UN Seeks Release Hostage Staff Members in Darfur
New York, Oct 29 2009
The top African Union-United Nations peacekeeping official in Sudan met with leading Government ministers this week to urge them to step up efforts for the safe release of abducted UN and other humanitarian workers in the strife-torn Darfur region, calling it a “hostage crisis.”
Henry Anyidoho,
Acting Joint Special Representative of the AU–UN Mission
in Darfur, know as (UNAMID: http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/unamid/),
discussed the release and steps to pre-empt recurrences with
Sudanese Interior Minister Ibrahim Mahmoud Hamid and
Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Al Saman Al Wasila
while on his way to Abuja, Nigeria, to attend the AU Peace
and Security Council meeting on Darfur.
Two UNAMID
civilian staff members were abducted from their home in the
West Darfur town of Zalingei at the end of August and have
yet to be released.
Last week, a staff member of the
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC),
French-British national Gauthier Lefevre, was snatched by
gunmen while retuning to El Geneina, capital of West Darfur
state, from a field mission to help local communities obtain
clean drinking water.
A week before that, an armed
rebel group in North Darfur state released two staffers of
the international non-governmental organization (NGO) GOAL
after they had spent three months in captivity.
Mr.
Anyidoho discussed the current security situation and
strategies to reduce banditry and criminality in Darfur with
the two ministers, thanked them for their cooperation with
UNAMID and sought continued and enhanced cooperation in
executing the mission’s mandate.
Both ministers
assured him of the Government’s full commitment to
upcoming talks with Darfur rebel movements aimed at bringing
peace to a region where at least 300,000 people are
estimated to have died and another 2.7 million more have been driven from their
homes in over six years of fighting between the Government,
its militia allies and various armed
groups.
ENDS
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