Darfur needs UN force despite Sudan’s Beshir opposition – Annan
(GENEVA) — Sudan’s troubled region of Darfur needs a UN peacekeeping force, despite President Omar al-Beshir’s repeated opposition to deployment of Western forces, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said Thursday.
Annan said that such a force would be essential to uphold the “tenuous and incomplete” peace accord between Khartoum and rebel groups.
“I still think a United Nations peacekeeping force will be needed to help the parties implement the peace agreement and help provide security for the internally displaced,” Annan told journalists in Geneva.
He also said more pressure needed to be placed on rebel holdouts who have rejected peace moves.
The United Nations wants to replace an embattled and under-equipped contingent of African Union troops in the western region of Darfur with its own Blue Helmets from other member states.
Khartoum has not completely ruled out a UN takeover but has repeatedly voiced its opposition to any deployment without its prior consent and accused Western powers of challenging Sudan’s sovereignty.
“I swear that there will not be any international military intervention in Darfur as long as I am in power,” Beshir was quoted as telling a meeting of his ruling National Congress late Monday.
“Sudan, which was the first country south of the Sahara to gain independence, cannot now be the first country to be recolonised,” he said.
Annan said that efforts were continuing to get Khartoum to change tack.
“I hope ultimately that we’ll be able to convince them to accept a UN force,” he said.
“No one, and least of all the UN, is interested in imposing anything like a colonial rule on one of its member states.”
Annan noted that a UN force was already deployed in southern Sudan, where a separate peace deal in January 2005 ended two decades of civil war.
“We are on the ground. We have 10,000 UN troops in southern Sudan, so they know how we operate and this is why it’s even more incomprehensible the resistance we are getting from them.”
“Obviously we will build on what the African Union has created and retain some of the African Union forces,” he said.
If Sudan finally gives in, it could take months to deploy a UN force in Darfur. The existing African Union force will need more international financial support in the meantime to continue its mandate, Annan said.
Further, Annan said he hoped an aid conference in Brussels next month would produce more support for the African Union’s force, but that longer term “I still think a United Nations peacekeeping force will be needed.”
Sudan, Africa’s largest country, has been wracked by near-constant conflict since it was granted independence by Britain fifty years ago.
Since the civil war broke out in Darfur in February 2003, the combined effect of fighting and a dire humanitarian crisis has left up to 300,000 people dead and more than two million displaced.
(ST)