EU Solana: Still hopeful of switching to UN Darfur force

Mar 9, 2006 (BRUSSELS) — E.U. foreign policy chief Javier Solana said on Thursday he remained hopeful the African Union could come to an agreement on Friday to agree to transfer their mission in the troubled Darfur region of Sudan to a wider U.N. force.

“It is for the leaders who are concerned to take this decision. We hope that the African Union will decide to move to a U.N. mission,” Solana said.

At the U.N. in New York, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said the U.S. focus in the last 10 days “has been to avoid a situation where the A.U. changes or obscures its initial decision in principle to welcome the rehatting” of the A.U. force.

The U.S. wants the transfer to a U.N. peacekeeping mission to get under way quickly and its lobbying effort is aimed “to eliminate the roadblock to the Security Council mandating this rehatting and beginning the transition and conducting it in an expeditious fashion,” Bolton said.

Asked if he was confident the A.U. would agree to the “rehatting” of the A.U. force into a U.N. force, Bolton said: “I’m not confident and we’re concerned that Sudan’s very aggressive effort to convince people not to go forward with the rehatting may succeed. That’s why we have undertaken a diplomatic effort of the extent that we have. I’m sure there are still conversations going on. But at this point we’ll know tomorrow what the answer is,” Bolton told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York.

The E.U., U.S. and African officials have been urging Sudan to allow a large U.N. peacekeeping force to replace the current African Union mission. Darfur’s conflict, described by the U.N. as the world’s gravest humanitarian crisis, has left more than 180,000 people dead and 2 million displaced.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, in Paris for a World Bank donor meeting, called for urgent action.

“We urged the people in Khartoum to recognize that making the U.N. a point of conflict will be self-destructive for them,” Zoellick said.

Zoellick said a future U.N. contingent could build on the 7,000-strong African Union force already on the ground in Darfur. Troops from African countries and possibly India and Pakistan could make up the rest of the force, he said.

He warned that it could take several months to get a U.N. peacekeeping force together, adding that the international community had “no time to waste.”

“Millions of people are at risk here,” he said.

(ST/AP)