Pushing forward the Darfur issue into the next stage calls for multi-aspect efforts from the international community, a Chinese official said in Beijing onThursday.

Assistant Foreign Minister Zhai Jun made the remark during the opening ceremony of the "Darfur: Peace and Development" seminar held by the China Institute of International Studies.

The Chinese side believed the three parties – Sudan, the African Union (AU) and the United Nations (UN) – should fully play the role of the tri-party negotiation as a major channel to promote the deployment of the hybrid UN-AU mission at an early date through dialogue and equal consultation, Zhai said.

Meanwhile, peacekeeping operations and the political process should be pushed forward synchronously so as to achieve concrete results for negotiations. An urgent task currently for the international community was to push forward opposition parties in Darfur to unify views and create conditions for peaceful talks, Zhai said.

Besides, the humanitarian situation and security in Darfur should be continuously improved, he said, adding a ceasefire should be achieved so as to ensure humanitarian assistance going smoothly, based on which the international community should provide development aid to this area and help the people there to reconstruct their homes.

According to Zhai, solving the Darfur issue still faced difficulties. These included the delay in deploying the hybrid mission, insufficient equipment and logistics support, the standstill of the political process due to the refusal of some opposition groups of Darfur to join in political negotiation, and the turbulent security situation caused by scrimmages between anti-government forces and the government military.

He said to resolve the Darfur issue was a "systematic project" that included peace-keeping actions, political process, security and humanitarianism, economic reconstruction and social development, adding China would make joint efforts with the international community to strive for the resolve of the issue.

About 55 Chinese and foreign officials and experts attended the two-day seminar sponsored by the China Institute of International Studies.

(Xinhua News Agency June 27, 2008)