Russia proposing choppers for Darfur force

March 5, 2008 (UNITED NATIONS) — Russia is proposing to supply some of the helicopters the United Nations has been urgently seeking to back up the U.N./African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur, Moscow’s U.N. ambassador said on Wednesday.

“The most likely scenario of the use of Russian helicopters would be Russia supplying the helicopters with crews from other countries,” envoy Vitaly Churkin told reporters.

The United Nations has for months been seeking six attack and 18 transport helicopters to support the planned 26,000-strong UNAMID force, which is starting to deploy in the violence-torn Darfur region of western Sudan.

The U.N. peacekeeping department says the helicopters are essential for UNAMID in its efforts to bring peace to an area the size of France.

Countries have been slow to respond. The United Nations has accepted four attack helicopters from Ethiopia and is continuing discussions with Ethiopia and Bangladesh on transport helicopters.

Churkin said he understood the Russian offer was for several helicopters of a type that could be used in desert conditions, but he had no further details.

He also said Russia would be sending helicopters and crews to work with a separate European Union peacekeeping force in neighboring Chad.

The lack of the helicopters has been one of many problems slowing deployment of UNAMID, which is replacing an ineffectual 7,000-strong AU force to try to end five years of violence involving Sudanese forces, allied militias and Darfur rebel groups. International experts say some 200,000 people have been killed and more than 2 million made homeless by the Darfur violence. Khartoum says the actual figures are far lower.

ON THE GROUND

Richard Williamson, the newly appointed U.S. special envoy to Sudan, met U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday to urge the deployment go ahead as fast as possible.

“I think we’re wrong to obsess about the helicopters,” he told reporters later. “Our immediate obsession should be to try to get peacekeepers on the ground.”

There are currently just over 9,000 peacekeepers in Darfur. Some 3,600 more, from Egypt and Ethiopia, are meant to arrive by the end of May.

Williamson said on a visit to Sudan last week he had urged President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who wants UNAMID to consist mainly of African troops, to give final authorization for 1,600 Thai and Nepalese troops the United Nations wants to send.

He said that in return the United States was willing to help African contingents to deploy. More discussions would be held with Sudanese authorities on the issue, he added.

Williamson also said a group of countries known as “friends of UNAMID” would be launched on Thursday to help individual countries with training and equipment for deploying.

Diplomats said the group would consist of the United States, Britain, France, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Tanzania, the European Union and the U.N. peacekeeping department.

(Reuters)