UN frustrated by Sudan’s foot-dragging on Darfur
March 6, 2007 (UNITED NATIONS) — Security Council members voiced mounting frustration Tuesday at Sudan’s perceived foot-dragging over UN plans for joint African Union-UN peacekeeping in strife-torn Darfur.
“There is a lot of frustration among council members,” said South Africa’s UN Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo, who chairs the 15-member council this month.
A Western diplomat said African and European members of the council were particularly angry at Khartoum’s perceived procrastination.
French Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere expressed disappointment that Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir had not yet replied to a letter from UN chief Ban Ki-moon on a proposed joint UN-AU peacekeeping operation in Darfur.
“I am disappointed that we have not yet received the letter… We have been told for days that this letter was about to come,” he noted. “If it does not come, then we’ll have to see what to do and there are some delegations on the council thinking about taking measures (sanctions).”
Sudan’s UN envoy Abdalmahmood Mohamad meanwhile indicated that the letter was on its way but “will not contain anything new.”
British Ambassador Emyr Jones-Parry also expressed exasperation at Khartoum’s stance and also warned that the council might have to take tougher action if Beshir does not respond quickly to Ban’s letter.
In his letter sent in January, Ban sought Khartoum’s permission for the dispatch of over 2,300 UN troops to lay the groundwork for a robust joint AU-UN force to take over peacekeeping in Darfur from cash-strapped and ill-equipped AU troops.
“Security for the people is essential, humanitarian access is crucial,” Jones Parry said.
Kumalo meanwhile said other council members urged patience “to allow the process to continue.”
The ambassadors spoke after attending a closed-door council meeting in which UN special envoy Jan Eliasson briefed them on his efforts to shore up the Darfur peace deal.
In February Eliasson and his African Union (AU) counterpart Salim Ahmed Salim traveled to Sudan where they met with Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir and Darfur rebel commanders in a bid to re-energize the flagging Darfur peace deal.
Khartoum signed the peace accord last May with one Darfur rebel faction, but other factions declined to sign on to the deal and the conflict has raged on, and even intensified according to humanitarian aid groups.
Eliasson told reporters after the meeting that both Sudan’s government and rebels concede that “there is no military solution” to the grinding conflict in Darfur.
Eliasson, a Swedish former foreign minister, said he and Salim “met with understanding” from both the Khartoum government and Darfur rebel commanders during their joint mission.
“We expect results from the parties,” Eliasson said, while calling for greater efforts to improve the humanitarian plight of Darfurians.
“Our focus was on the political aspect”, he added, while insisting that the United Nations was pressing in parallel for a UN peacekeeping presence.
Eliasson welcomed the fact that Sudanese government forces have stopped aerial bombings of rebel positions in Darfur since February 11 in response to a UN request.
He however highlighted “the growing problem of tribal warfare” in Darfur, which he said has nothing to do with the Khartoum government.
Last July, the Security Council passed a resolution calling for the deployment of 20,000 UN peacekeepers to halt the violence in Darfur.
But Beshir steadfastly rejected any large-scale UN troop deployment there, although he later endorsed a three-phase plan agreed at high-level November meetings in Ethiopia and Nigeria for the deployment of a “hybrid” AU-UN peacekeeping force.
The Sudanese leader has made it clear that any peacekeeping force in Darfur must remain under the aegis of the AU and that the UN would be confined to a “technical and logistics role”.
The war in Darfur erupted in February 2003 when rebels from minority tribes in the vast western province took up arms to demand an equal share of national resources, prompting a heavy-handed crackdown from Sudanese government forces and their Janjaweed proxy militia.
According to UN estimates, 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced.
(AFP)