UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Saturday his goal is to reach a final political settlement to end the four year conflict in Darfur, as he arrived in the hometown of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to discuss upcoming peace negotiations. Ban announced Thursday that Libya will host the talks set for Oct. 27 and he again praised the country's important mediating role in organizing two meetings with Darfur rebel groups earlier this year. «They have experience ... (and) we'd like to have such mediating role fully used, but I'd like to make it again clear that this is going to be (an) African Union-U.N. leading role,» he told reporters en route here from Chad. Ban's stop in Libya was the last in a three-nation tour to promote an end to the protracted conflict in Darfur which has left more than 200,000 people dead and 2.5 million uprooted, the Associated Press reported. The secretary-general and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir announced the venue and date of the new negotiations in a joint communique after a second round of talks in Khartoum. It said the U.N. and AU would be issuing invitations to rebel groups and movements to attend the new peace talks with Sudanese government under the auspices of the two organizations. Ban made clear he wants these negotiations to produce results. «First and foremost, we must have (the) Tripoli meeting a success,» Ban said. «We'd like to make it the final phase of political negotiations. That's our goal. We'll all try our best efforts.»
