African leaders mull expanding Darfur troop mandate
By Andrew Quinn
ADDIS ABABA, July 7 (Reuters) – African leaders considered on Wednesday expanding the mandate of a planned African Union troop deployment in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region to protect one million civilians who have fled marauding Arab militias.
The African Union’s Peace and Security Council has already recommended sending 300 armed soldiers to Darfur to protect 60 AU officials monitoring a shaky ceasefire signed between the Sudanese government and rebels in April.
Under that recommendation the troops were also to patrol the overcrowded refugee camps and border areas between Sudan and Chad to give confidence to hundreds of thousands of people caught up in widespread looting and burning of villages by Arab “Janjaweed” militia in Sudan’s far west.
But under the new proposal being considered by African leaders at a summit on Wednesday, the AU troops would have an explicit mandate to protect the civilians, raising the prospect of clashes with the militia, which rights groups have accused Khartoum of arming.
Sudan denies the charge and says it has begun disarming the militia.
Four African presidents including South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki and Nigeria’s Olusegun Obasanjo, the new president of the 53-member AU, were due to report on the proposal to the full summit of AU leaders in Ethiopia’s capital by Thursday, an AU official said.
“They have established a committee to discuss expanding the mandate of the AU to protecting the civilians in Darfur,” he said.
Described by the United Nations as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, the situation in Darfur is seen by analysts and diplomats as a major test for the two-year-old AU, which is trying to win increased Western investment in return for ending wars and despotism and curbing corruption.
The Darfur mission would mark the AU’s only joint military deployment since it sent peacekeepers to Burundi in 2003.
Mozambique President Joaquim Chissano said it could take more than a week to get the troops in place in Darfur.
“We are still putting together all the possible logistics so that we can send as much troops as we can send,” Chissano told Reuters. “These things cannot take only days.”
AU SAYS DARFUR NOT GENOCIDE
The AU’s Peace and Security Council urged Khartoum on Wednesday urgently to “neutralise” the Janjaweed militia but said the bloodshed was not a genocide, a term used by some rights groups.
The ruling was immediately proclaimed as a victory by the Sudanese government, which has long denied that the Arab militia’s attacks on African civilians are part of a government-backed extermination campaign.
“The decision showed quite clearly that there is no genocide. We are happy about it, although we admit that there is a desperate humanitarian need,” Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail told Reuters.
The peacemaking council demanded that all those responsible for killings and destruction of homes be brought to justice and asked the Sudanese government to consider ways and means to compensate “affected populations”.
“Even though the crisis in Darfur is grave, with unacceptable levels of deaths, human suffering and destruction of homes and infrastructure, the situation cannot be described as a genocide,” a Peace and Security Council statement said.
“The crisis should be addressed with urgency … Council welcomes the commitment made by the government to disarm and neutralise the Janjaweed militia and urges the government to follow through with these commitments.”
After years of tension in Darfur between nomadic Arab tribes and African farmers, two groups rebelled last year, accusing Khartoum of arming the Janjaweed militias.
Khartoum has agreed to attend AU-mediated talks on Darfur in Ethiopia on July 15, but the rebels say they will not negotiate unless Sudan first disarms the marauding Arab militias and respects the ceasefire.
In a further complication, one of the rebel groups, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), said it did not consider Ethiopia a neutral venue as it had security agreements with Sudan.
“We will go to the talks if they are held in an impartial country,” JEM Secretary-General Baher Eldin Idris told Reuters.
(Additional reporting by Opheera McDoom and William Maclean)