UN Secretary General Kofi Annan held high-level talks here on Thursday aimed at forging elusive consensus on how to deal with Sudan's troubled western Darfur region but appeared stymied.
In meeting with senior African Union (AU), Sudanese and Arab League officials Annan met stiff resistance from Sudan for his plan to create a hybrid AU-UN peacekeeping mission to deal with escalating violence in Darfur.
Sudan is vehemently opposed to a UN role despite the cash-strapped AU's appeals for it to be transfered to the world body and efforts to convince Khartoum to ease its stance have thus far yielded little success.
Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol told reporters that his government was willing to allow some international support for the AU mission, known as AMIS, but would never accept UN command of the force.
"We are ready to accept the assistance of the UN to support the AMIS in terms of telecommunications, logistics, technical assistance, but the command of the troops should remain African," he said.
Asked about the possibility of blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers in Darfur, he replied simply "No."
But a day after saying in neighbouring Kenya that he still hoped to send UN peacekeepers to Darfur, Annan expressed hope the meeting would produce results.
"We are having very good discussions, very constructive," he told reporters during a break, adding that individual working groups would meet on three elements before the main players resumed their plenary meeting late on Thursday.
The UN chief, on his final tour of Africa as the world's top diplomat before stepping down at year's end, was meeting with AU commission chief Alpha Oumar Konare and AU Peace and Security Council chief Said Djinnit.
In addition to Akol, representatives from Gabon and Congo, the current AU chair, and the Arab League, are also present.
"We have not given up on UN presence in Darfur," Annan said on Wednesday while attending a UN climate change conference in Nairobi.
"We need to continue efforts to calm Darfur, to get assistance to the internally displaced and to gain access for humanitarian workers," he said, adding that UN staff might also be sent to neighbouring Chad.
"We are looking at putting some sort of international presence on the border with Chad to ensure cross-border attacks are minimal," Annan said.
One AU official predicted Thursday's meeting would not produce significant results in addressing the escalating unrest in Darfur that has raged for more than three years, mainly because Annan will soon leave his post.
"This meeting may not yield much," the official who is close to Konare told AFP on condition of anonymity. "Everyone is holding to their position and knows that Kofi Annan is on his way out."
A UN official said Sudan has already made contact with Ban Ki-Moon, the South Korean foreign minister who will replace Annan as the head of the world body in January 1, 2007.
Sudan says handing the AU mission to the United Nations threatens its sovereignty and risks worsening the situation in Darfur where at least 200,000 people have been killed and about 2.5 million others displaced by the war.
It instead favours a reinforced and expanded AU mission, the mandate for which was to have expired on September 30 but has since been extended to the end of the year.
The African Union has announced plans to boost the mission from the current 7,000 to 11,000 but has been unable to move the additional personnel in due to funding woes and lack of transportation assets.
The war in Darfur erupted in February 2003 when rebels from minority tribes took up arms to demand an equal share of national resources, prompting a heavy-handed crackdown from the government forces and proxy militia called Janjaweed.