African force should stay beyond September 30 – Taha
Sept 18, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan has urged the African Union to extend the mandate of its truce monitors in Darfur, ahead of a crucial vote by the African body and amid mounting pressure on Khartoum to accept UN forces.
“The African Union should extend their mandate beyond September 30,” Vice President Ali Osman Taha told reporters in Khartoum on Monday, referring to the official expiry of the 7,000-strong contingent’s mandate.
The African Union’s Peace and Security Council was due to hold a vote on extending the mandate later Monday in New York but the gathering was postponed due to the absence of key leaders.
The African body, whose first ever peacekeeping mission has been undermined by paltry funding and a lack of adequate equipment, has already asked the UN to take over but its request has been roundly rejected by Khartoum.
Taha reiterated that his government was willing to offer financial assistance to the AU force, an offer first made at an Arab summit in Khartoum in March.
An extension of the AU mandate would offer more time for all parties to continue negotiations and avert a diplomatic crisis over the planned deployment of UN forces in the war-torn western region.
The UN Security Council adopted a resolution late last month which calls for the deployment of up to 20,000 UN peacekeepers to replace the cash-strapped and ill-equipped AU troops in Darfur, a region the size of France.
Beshir has become increasingly isolated in rejecting the planned UN mission, with Western powers turning up the heat on his regime and his Sudanese peace partners breaking ranks on the issue.
The veteran president charges that the UN plans are a US-engineered ploy to invade his country and plunder its resources.
“If the African Union is to form the core of a UN force, why insist on placing it under UN command instead of providing it with financial and technical assistance?,” asked Taha at Monday’s press conference.
The combined effect of war and famine has left up to 300,000 people dead in Darfur and displaced 2.5 million in three and half years of civil war pitting the government and allied militias against ethnic minority rebels.
Analysts argue Khartoum fears that a UN presence in Darfur could pave the way for arrests of government officials accused of war crimes.
“The United Nations cannot declare war on a member state and as long as we remain UN members, nobody can force the deployment of peacekeepers in Darfur,” Taha said. “There will be no international forces in Darfur without Sudanese consent.”
Western leaders have upped the pressure on Beshir in recent days, warning Khartoum that it will be held responsible for any new humanitarian disaster.
“The thing that will be really … catastrophic would be to have a security vacuum where the African Union left and there would be no one to replace it,” British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said Sunday.
Beshir’s response to the UN Security Council resolution was to dispatch his own troops to Darfur, sparking fresh fighting with rebel factions that refused to endorse an AU-sponsored peace agreement signed in May.
(AFP/ST)