Sudan open to UN force in Chad
Jan 20, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — The Sudanese government has said that it has no objections to the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force to neighbouring Chad provided it kept out of Sudan.
“We will not be concerned if the UN forces are deployed inside the Chadian territories but they will not have a chance to enter the Sudan,” Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Sammani al-Wasila Sammani told reporters Saturday.
A UN team is due in the Chadian capital N’Djamena Sunday on a 16-day mission to assess the prospects for the deployment of peacekeepers to Chad and the Central African Republic to contain the spillover from the nearly four-year conflict in Sudan’s western region of Darfur.
On Tuesday, the UN Security Council expressed readiness to consider establishing a mission that would help “improve security on the Chad and Central African side of the border with Sudan and to foster regional peace and stability.”
Last year, the Security Council approved a peacekeeping force for Darfur itself but its deployment was repeatedly rejected by the government of President Omar al-Beshir.
The United Nations has since been in painstaking negotiations with Khartoum on a compromise under which the world body would provide assistance to an existing African Union force that would gradually be converted into a hybrid AU-UN force.
At least 200,000 people have died in Darfur and well over two million more fled their homes since an ethnic miniority rebellion launched in early 2003 drew a scorched earth response from the Sudanese military and its Arab militia allies.
Although the Sudanese government disputes the UN figures, other sources give an even higher toll.
(AFP)