Darfur needs UN force, says Sudanese opposition
Mar 9, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan’s opposition said on Thursday they supported a plan to hand over peacekeeping in the country’s troubled Darfur region to the United Nations and denounced a government media campaign against it as misleading.
The African Union (AU) is due to decide on Friday whether to ask the United Nations to take over a 7,000-strong AU force already monitoring a shaky ceasefire in a region where fighting has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions.
But Sudan’s Khartoum-based government has characterised any U.N. peacekeeping force in Darfur as a foreign invasion and has waged a domestic information campaign that culminated in a march of thousands through the streets of the capital on Wednesday.
“Yesterday’s march was part of the government effort to influence public opinion — they are conducting a planned and misleading media effort,” said Mariam al-Mahdi, spokeswoman of the widely popular opposition Umma party.
“It’s very serious because it might drag Sudan into a nonsensical confrontation with the international community.”
Opposition politicians say the government’s knee-jerk reaction is being driven by the military, who fear that U.N. forces in Darfur might in future be asked to arrest those accused of alleged war crimes by the U.N.’s International Criminal Court (ICC).
“They are afraid that if the court has come to a point to arrest people then the UN contingent will do that,” said Bashir Adam Rahma, Popular Congress Party political affairs chief.
The United States has condemned the violence in Darfur as genocide and accuses Sudan’s Khartoum-based government of fighting mostly non-Arab rebel movements in Darfur by arming Arab militias known colloquially as the Janjaweed.
Khartoum denies genocide, says it armed some tribes but denies links to the Janjaweed.
The Janjaweed have carried on a campaign of rape and pillage across the western Darfur region terrorising villagers, destroying crops and burning down homes in a three-year conflict that has left some two million people homeless.
Mahdi said as members of the United Nations it was irresponsible for the government to portray the U.N. as conquerors. “We Sudanese are members of U.N. peacekeeping forces around the world, for example in Somalia,” she said.
Mubarak al-Fadil al-Mahdi, head of a breakaway faction of the Umma party, said a strong U.N. force could police the region and bring an end to Darfur violence.
“You need to bring a formidable force to protect the people in Darfur,” he said. “The U.N. … would have a better chance of doing that,” he added.
(Reuters)