LIBYA - Sept 8 - Qaddafi To Assist With Darfur Peace Talks In Libya.

Sec Gen Ban Ki Moon meets with Col Muammar el-Qaddafi and says the Libyan leader had pledged to use his influence to get Sudanese rebel leaders to attend a peace conference next month on Darfur. "He said he would bring all the leaders of all movements he can to participate in the meetings", Ban said, standing under the spacious green and yellow tent behind Qaddafi's house in this desert town where their 90-minute meeting took place. The Darfur peace talks, under the auspices of the UN and the African Union, are to begin Oct. 27 in Tripoli, the Libyan capital. In the high point of a weeklong African trip devoted to Darfur, Ban secured a commitment from the Sudanese government in Khartoum to enter the talks. The task facing the planners now is to obtain the broadest possible participation from leaders of the fragmented Sudanese rebel movements, and Ban said he was confident that Qaddafi would play "an important and constructive role". Several of the groups have their base in Tripoli, and Qaddafi last year helped broker an accord that ended a volatile conflict between Sudan and Chad. The meeting between the two men furthered a pattern in which Qaddafi has become a mediator in his region and has labored to integrate his once-shunned country into the community of nations with which he had decades of antagonistic relations. The UN lifted its sanctions against Libya in 2003 and the US resumed full diplomatic relations in 2004. It was the second meeting with Qaddafi since Ban became secretary general in January. He was to have met with the Libyan leader in Tripoli. But Friday, the Libyans moved the meeting to Sirte, the breezy desert setting Qaddafi often uses in the summer. Ban took the abrupt shift in stride. "I'm interested in meeting him in Sirte, his hometown", he said cheerfully on the flight here from Ndjamena, the capital of Chad. "I'm interested in meeting him in a different atmosphere in which we can build a much closer relationship and which makes it much more friendly". At the end of the meeting, the two huddled in armchairs for more than 30 minutes, banishing their aides to sit outside the tent. Qaddafi, whose fashions often draw comment, appeared in ochre trousers and a short-sleeved brown shirt patterned in green patches in the shape of Africa. A gray shawl was draped over his shoulders. He left the meeting without comment. Ali Triki, a former Libyan ambassador to the UN who is now Libya's minister for African affairs, will be Libya's chief contact with the two men running the Darfur talks in October: Jan Eliasson, Ban's special representative for Darfur, and Salim Salim, the AU envoy. Triki said that the problems in Darfur had struck home with Libyans. "We have three-quarters of a million Darfuris working in Libya, and our security is united with Sudan and Darfur", he said.