(AP)

The African Union on Monday called for a comprehensive political settlement of the conflict in Darfur that it said should also help solve unrest in other parts of Sudan

A seven-member AU panel, headed by South African former president Thabo Mbeki, prepared the 153-page report to the UN Security Council recommending that Darfur requires a political settlement and a process of negotiations addressing issues of "peace, justice and reconciliation".
The comprehensive settlement should build on the sharing of power and wealth, national reconciliation and national unity in Sudan because the Darfur conflict affects the entire country.

Mbeki appeared before the 15-nation council in New York to release the report.
"The roots of Darfur's crisis lie in a history of neglect of the Sudanese peripheries, dating from colonial times and continuing during the years of Sudanese independence," the report said. "The crisis in Darfur is a manifestation of Sudan's inequitable distribution of wealth and power."
The panel said the inequitable distribution of wealth and power caused the crisis in Darfur, which erupted in 2003 with insurgents attacking the Khartoum government.

"The unfulfilled aspirations of the Darfurians for a fair share of the country's wealth and equal participation in the national polity made confrontation with the state inevitable," the report said in the first acknowledgement that the conflict has been far from an ethnic war pitting African rebels against Khartoum's Islamic government.