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 ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged some of Africa's most unstable states Wednesday to restore security and shore up faltering peace deals, but a Sudanese faction's rebuff and the Somali president's illness stole momentum from her attempts at diplomacy.
In a hectic series of meetings in the Ethiopian capital, Rice tried to calm the volatile Great Lakes region, ease rising tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea and violence in Somalia, cool the conflict in Sudan's Darfur province, and salvage a shaky north-south Sudan peace deal.
Rice had said she wanted to tackle elements of the Darfur conflict and bolster the 2005 peace deal that ended a separate, long-running north-south civil war. But the government of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir skipped the meeting, although Rice went on to meet southern Sudanese leaders, according to a list of delegates released by the U.S. Embassy.
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