A high-level United Nations team will hold a two-day meeting with African Union (AU) officials in Addis Ababa starting on Monday, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Friday. The aim of the talks is to forge stronger U.N.-AU cooperation, including the establishment of a 10-year plan to strengthen AU capacity, Dujarric told reporters. The U.N. team includes top political affairs official Ibrahim Gambari, Africa economic official Abdoulie Janneh, and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's adviser on Africa Legwaila Joseph Legwaila. They will be meeting with AU leaders including chairman Alpha Konare. The talks, although scheduled previously, come just days after the U.N. Security Council voted in favor of sending U.N. peacekeepers to Sudan's Darfur region, even though Khartoum has not consented to a new U.N. force. "We can see by what is going on currently with AMIS (African Union Mission in Sudan) and the need to strengthen AMIS that it is important that that international community do what it can to increase the capacity and structure of the AU to deploy and support its own peacekeepers," Dujarric replied to a question from S.P.A. on whether the current situation in Darfur would be discussed. Under the new resolution, AMIS troops, which are understaffed, under funded, and unable to be truly effective in a part of Sudan the size of France, would be strengthened logistically and otherwise by U.N. member states, and its mandate would eventually be transferred to U.N. peacekeepers. Meanwhile, Annan released a report on Friday that indicates the cost for a U.N. mission in Sudan for 12 months would be $1.6 billion. "We are obviously aware that the extension of the U.N. mission in the Sudan was going to be an expensive proposition," U.S. Ambassador John Bolton told S.P.A., noting that both France and Japan have expressed concern at the cost of an expanded U.N. force. "We think Sudan is important. The government of the United States and the Bush administration has devoted a very substantial effort to Sudan. I have no doubt our efforts to raise money for the force will remain very energetic," said Bolton.
