US envoy to visit Sudan to push for hybrid force

Dec 8, 2006 (WASHINGTON) — Washington’s special envoy to Sudan will visit the African country this week in an effort to persuade the Sudanese government to accept a “hybrid” international force to help calm the violence in Darfur, a U.S. official said on Thursday.

U.S. envoy Andrew Natsios will arrive in Sudan on Saturday and will pay visits to Khartoum, Darfur and southern Sudan before traveling to neighboring Chad on Thursday, said the official, who spoke on condition he not be identified.

Experts estimate that 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million uprooted in nearly four years by the violence in Darfur, which the U.S. government has labeled genocide.

The official said the main reason for the visit was “to try to continue to push” for the Sudanese government to accept a joint U.N.-African Union force to deploy in Darfur to help end one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

The United States and its allies have been pushing hard for a United Nations force to go into Sudan’s troubled western Darfur region and finally offered a joint U.N.-AU force which Sudan initially appeared to accept but later rejected.

The African Union currently has about 7,000 troops in the vast desert region but its force is widely viewed as lacking the funds, manpower and equipment to maintain security.

(Reuters)