More troops won’t solve Darfur conflict – Carter
Feb 8, 2007 (ACCRA) — Sending more peacekeepers to Sudan’s Darfur region will not bring an end to years of conflict without a negotiated settlement being in place first, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said on Thursday.
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir is under pressure to approve a deployment of 3,000 U.N. peacekeepers to support a 7,000-strong African Union mission in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people are estimated to have been killed since 2003.
“You can’t resolve a conflict in an area as wide as Darfur even with 50,000 troops. Troops are not the way to do it,” Carter, 82, said in an interview in Ghana’s capital, Accra.
“The government in Khartoum is not going to let them in. Even with five times as many troops they still couldn’t do it,” he told Reuters on the eve of a trip to Sudan, where he is expected to meet with Bashir.
Washington describes the violence in Darfur as genocide, a charge the Islamic government in Khartoum denies. Some 2.5 million people are estimated to have been driven from their homes to makeshift camps by the fighting.
The conflict began when mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms complaining of marginalisation by Khartoum. Militia used by the government to quell the revolt are accused by human rights groups of pillage, rape and murder, and some of the rebel groups are blamed for similar crimes.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon gave Bashir a letter on Jan. 24 detailing a U.N. support package, called the second phase, that would include more than 2,200 soldiers, 75 civilians, 300 security personnel and 600-700 police.
Six light helicopters would move U.N. troops quickly around the vast region when attacks were reported.
Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, said the United Nations, Europe and the United States needed to push for a negotiated settlement first.
“The U.N., the EU and the U.S. need to harness all their tremendous influence to force all of the conflicting parties to negotiate a peace agreement and accept it,” he said.
“We need to emphasise a negotiated settlement. Then you should use military influence to enforce the agreement. That is what I will be discussing with Bashir.”
Carter, who founded the Carter Center in 1982 to promote democracy and development around the world, was in Ghana to draw attention to the country’s growing guinea worm epidemic. He is also due to visit Ethiopia and Nigeria.
(Reuters)