Sudan accepts expanding mandate of international force
By TAREK EL-TABLAWY, Associated Press Writer
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 01, 2004 (AP) — Facing demands for quick action from the United States and U.N. human rights experts, Sudan’s foreign minister pledged to allow more African troops and police help end the conflict in Darfur with a new mandate to protect civilians and prevent violence.
Mustafa Osman Ismail was responding to a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing a beefed-up African Union force with a broader mandate and a call Thursday by U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour for international police to work in tandem with Sudanese police whom she described as ineffective.
Ismail told reporters after addressing a closed-door meeting of the Security Council that he discussed the issue of an expanded AU force in Darfur with African Union officials “just a few days ago.”
When the new AU troops arrive, he said, “they’re going to bring more than a thousand police together with the monitors in order to work with the Sudanese police officers for protection and checking and so on.”
The Sudanese minister spoke to the council hours after members heard a sobering and dire report by two top human rights experts, Arbour and the U.N. Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, Juan Mendez.
While stopping short of classifying the situation in Darfur as a genocide, Mendez said that crimes against humanity and war crimes “probably occurred on a large and systematic scale.”
Mendez also said that the “climate of impunity” in the beleaguered region is such that “we have not turned the corner on preventing genocide from happening in the future, or even in the near future.”
Arbour presented several recommendations to the council, the most important of which she said was the need for an international police force at refugee camps.
The deployment of Sudanese police, she said, has done little to restore the faith of the 1.2 million Sudanese displaced by the fighting in the region and is contributing to the “climate of impunity reigning in Darfur today.”
U.S. Ambassador John Danforth said the Sudanese minister agreed with his assessment that finalizing the agreement between the government and rebels in southern Sudan “is the key to peace in Darfur.”
Peace talks in Naivasha, Kenya, have broken down, and Danforth said “it’s important for both sides to go back to Naivasha and to conclude negotiations,” insisting there is “no reason why this is dragging on.”
It “can be done in a matter of weeks and it must be done for the sake of the people in Darfur,” the U.S. ambassador said.
Ismail, in what can be construed as a major concession by the government, said the government would accept an expanded mandate for the AU force, which the Security Council and Arbour have pressed for.
The Sudanese minister said the government would also welcome an expanded AU contingent and “if they want 5,000 (troops), it’s no problem.”
The U.N. resolution threatened possible sanctions against the Khartoum government if it doesn’t act to rein in Arab militias blamed for killing over 50,000 people and forcing 1.2 million to flee their homes.
“The mandate, we accepted it,” Ismail told reporters. “They’re going to have more mandate in the field of checking, building of confidence … and checking the police (to see) whether it’s including any Janjaweed.”
Ismail said the expanded mandate could also include preventing conflicts from breaking out and protecting civilians.
In her report to the council, Arbour said a key challenge confronting security and aid to the region is “an alarming disconnect between the (Sudanese) government’s perception — or at least its portrayal — of what is happening in Darfur and the assessment of that situation by almost everyone else.”
The government “continues to convey neither a sense of urgency nor an acknowledgment of the magnitude of the human rights crisis in Darfur,” she said.
Council members described the meeting with Ismail as one that allowed Sudan to get a clearer understanding of the government’s responsibility while also allowing the council to hear the government’s views directly.
“Out of all that, I think there’s an understanding,” said Britain’s U.N. ambassador, Jones Perry, who will take over the council’s presidency on Friday.
“There was a spirit of: ‘What we want at the end of this is to help you guys. We’re not after penalizing you. We’re not after sanctions. What we are after is seeing the government fulfill its responsibilities to its own people, that it has to end impunity, it has to stop the atrocities’,” he said.
Algeria’s U.N. Ambassador, Abdallah Baali, said Ismail “put his case in a very convincing way.”
“The reaction of the council, of many members of the council, was more positive than someone would expect,” said Baali, adding that Ismail’s main point was that Sudan was ready to work with the United Nations and implement the resolution.
Baali said the Sudanese minister indicated the expansion of the AU force in the country could happen as early as Oct. 7 and that the Naivasha negotiations should also resume by that date.
Last week, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who heads the African Union, said the 53-nation body can quickly mobilize up to 5,000 troops to help end the looting and killing in Darfur but it needs hundreds of millions of dollars to deploy the force.
The AU currently has about 80 military observers in Darfur — a region about the size of France — protected by just over 300 soldiers, monitoring a rarely observed cease-fire signed in April by the government and rebels.
The AU force is widely seen by all sides as likely being one of the main deciding factors in settling the Darfur conflict.
But Danforth — who described as “baloney” claims by Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir that the United States was training the rebels — said “it is impossible to overemphasize the role of (southern rebel leader) John Garang in all of this, both in his willingness to be very serious and complete the peace process … and also use his good offices to try to bring peace to Darfur.”