Accounting problems are to blame for Darfur pay delays – AU

July 13, 2007 (ADDIS ABABA) — Accounting problems caused by demands from countries contributing troops are to blame for the long delays in paying African Union soldiers stationed in Sudan’s Darfur region, a senior AU official said on Friday.

“Some troop contributing countries want the AU to pay the $400 per person per month directly to their troops in Darfur,” Geofrey Mugumya, the AU Director of Peace and Security, told Reuters in an interview.

“Others want the AU to deduct a certain amount from the monthly payment and send it to their government and pay the remaining to troops in the field,” he added.

“These different payment modes have created heavy accounting paperwork, thus forcing delay in payment.”

On Thursday, European Union lawmakers called for an investigation into months-long delays in paying AU troops trying to contain the conflict in western Sudan, despite the 27-nation EU’s multimillion-euro contributions to the AU mission.

The stretched and ill-equipped AU mission, which has received more than 400 million euros of EU cash, has failed to stem violence in Sudan’s vast west.

Five EU lawmakers were told during a trip to the region earlier this month that “apparently the money is stuck in Addis Ababa,” the Ethiopian capital, where the AU is based.

Rodolphe Adada, the joint U.N.-AU special representative for Darfur and head of the AU’s Sudan mission, told Reuters in Khartoum the pay delays were undermining morale among troops operating in an increasingly dangerous situation.

The EU’s executive Commission believes the delays are due to lack of experience and administrative capacity and there has been no indication of fraud, a spokesman said this week.

“There are delays … but as far as we are aware one cannot talk about embezzlement,” a spokesman for EU aid Commissioner Louis Michel said.

International experts estimate 200,000 people have died in four years of rape, killing and disease in Darfur, violence Washington calls genocide. Khartoum rejects the term and puts the death toll at 9,000.

Khartoum opposed a U.N. takeover of the force, but under threat of sanctions it accepted a compromise AU-U.N. mission.

(Reuters)