UN team hails Sudan okay for Darfur force deployment

June 17, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — A UN Security Council delegation said it had secured the unconditional agreement of the Sudanese government Sunday for the deployment of a beefed up peacekeeping force to Darfur.

After talks with President Omar al-Beshir, who had long held out against the proposed hybrid UN-African Union force of up to 23,000 peacekeepers, South African ambassador to the United Nations Dumisani Kumalo said he had raised no objections to its deployment.

“Sudan has accepted the hybrid force without any conditionality,” Kumalo told a news conference. “The acceptance was confirmed by President Beshir.”

It was only last week in the face of intense international pressure and the threat of tougher UN sanctions that Khartoum finally gave its approval in principle to the proposed new force.

The Sudanese government had previously endorsed only logistical support from the United Nations for the existing 7,000-strong AU force, which has struggled to patrol a region the size of France.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon hailed Khartoum’s agreement in principle as “a milestone development”.

But Washington, which accuses the Arab-led government in Khartoum of genocide in its suppression of the four-year-old ethnic minority rebellion in Darfur, voiced scepticism and said it still intended to impose new sanctions.

The United States was “tightening existing economic sanctions against Sudan, and we’re imposing additional ones,” President George W. Bush said on Wednesday.

The African Union has acknowledged that a great deal of work still needs to be done before the additional troops and police are in place in war-torn Darfur.

“We have achieved a great breakthrough, next is the implementation. It has to start. A number of things have to be put in place,” the head of the AU Peace and Security Council Said Djinnit said on Saturday.

UN officials have said that the expanded Darfur force will consist of between 17,500 and 19,600 troops, in addition to more than 6,000 police who will help maintain security in the region’s displaced person camps where allegations of rape and other abuses remain widespread.

The United Nations estimates that at least 200,000 people have died and well over two million more fled their homes since the rebellion erupted in Darfur in February 2003, drawing a scorched earth response from the Sudanese army and its Arab militia allies.

Other sources give higher estimates although the Sudanese government disputes the figures.

(AFP)