A visiting UN envoy here Thursday called on the conflicting parties in Sudan's war-torn western region of Darfur to stop fighting and resort to peace negotiations to iron out their disputes.

Jan Eliasson, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's special envoy for the Darfur crisis, told a press conference that the peace process was continuing in Darfur in accordance with the peace agreement signed last May.

"All the parties should be committed to the peace process and stop the violence and fighting in order to help build the confidence," he urged.

Eliasson ruled out a possibility that the Darfur crisis could be resolved through military ways, stressing that it could only be resolved by political means.

"My view points are identical with Sudanese President Omer al- Bashir", the UN envoy said, after his meeting with al-Bashir earlier in the day.

Eliasson said that the process of delivering support by the UN to the African peacekeeping force in Darfur was smoothly continuing according to a three-phase plan worked out by the UN, the African Union (AU) and the Sudanese government last November.

He, however, declined to comment on when a UN-AU joint peacekeeping force will be formed in Darfur, saying "it is not the time to talk about this problem."

The Sudanese government reiterated on Tuesday its refusal of deploying UN peacekeepers in Darfur, saying what had been agreed upon was only a logistic, technical and material support to be provided by the UN to the AU force in Darfur.

Eliasson arrived here Tuesday on his first visit to Sudan since he was appointed to the present post on Dec. 19.

Source: Xinhua