KHARTOUM
Sudanese government officials met in capital Khartoum on Sunday with United Nations (UN) and African Union (AU) officials to discuss a strategy for the departure from Western Sudan's restive Darfur region of joint UN/AU troops.
Sudanese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Yousef al-Kordofani, said Sunday's meeting came to discuss the implementation of decisions taken on the African Union/United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) in December of 2014.
He said the Sudanese government was ready to draw up a strategy for the departure of the mission from Darfur.
In November of 2014, UNAMID claimed that Sudanese authorities had prevented its personnel from entering a village in Darfur to investigate claims about the rape of up to 200 village women by Sudanese government troops, according to Radio Dabanga, which is broadcast from the Netherlands.
Later in the same month, the Sudanese government protested the way the mission handled the rape claims in the village.
The Sudanese Foreign Ministry also said that it had notified the mission that it was preparing an exit strategy for it against the background of the rape claims.
UNAMID has been working in Darfur since early 2008.
It is by far the second largest peacekeeping mission in the world, containing 20,000 troops, policemen and personnel from different countries. The mission had a total budget of $1.4 billion in 2013.
Darfur has been the scene of a ferocious war between the Sudanese government and three rebel movements since 2003. The war has left 300,000 people dead and displaced around 2.5 million others so far, according to UN figures.
The Darfur conflict prompted in 2009 an arrest warrant against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir by the International Criminal Court on a number of charges, including genocide committed by government forces and allied militias.
