Darfur situation requires UN Peacekeepers – US’s Rice
Oct 3, 2006 (CAIRO) — U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a passionate plea to the international community Tuesday to persuade the government of Sudan to reverse itself and open the bloodied Darfur region to U.N. peacekeepers.
Rice said a U.N. force could be drawn principally from Muslim African countries and from North Africa and possibly Asia.
Dispensing with traditional diplomatic understatement, Rice cited U.N. reports that tens of thousands of people, or even hundreds of thousands, perhaps, cannot be reached with food and water.
Women who go out for firewood are regularly raped, she said. Villages are attacked by militia, by rebels and by government forces.
“This cannot go on,” Rice said at a news conference amid Mideast peacemaking efforts.
“The international community does have a responsibility to protect the most vulnerable,” she said. “What is going on in Darfur now cannot be tolerated.”
She said “we need to work urgently to have the government of Khartoum accept what is now a U.N. Security Council resolution.”
Her plea followed one Monday by U.S. President George W. Bush, who sent a message this summer to President Omar el-Bashir urging entry of a U.N. peacekeeping force. Bush was rebuffed.
In August, the U.N. passed a resolution that would give it authority over peacekeepers in the Western Sudanese province of Darfur. The resolution is meant to give more power and funding to a force, now run by the African Union, that has been unable to stop the humanitarian catastrophe there.
At least 200,000 people have died and some 2 million have been displaced since rebels from Darfur’s ethnic African population revolted in 2003. The next year, after a long internal debate, the Bush administration accused the government of genocide.
The Arab-dominated Khartoum government is alleged to have unleashed Arab militias, known as the janjaweed, against the ethnic African villagers.
“This is not a challenge to the sovereignty of Sudan,” Rice said of the proposed dispatch of U.N. peacekeepers. “This is certainly respected. But we need to deal with the terrible humanitarian situation there.”
(AP/ST)