EU, NATO vow to coordinate support for Darfur force

BRUSSELS, May 23 (AFP) — The European Union pledged to coordinate with NATO in providing personnel and equipment for an African peacekeeping force in war-torn Sudan, playing down any strains over who should do what.

French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie — whose country had expressed reservations about a NATO role — underlined Paris’ commitment to the mission, to be discussed at a meeting in Addis Ababa this week.

“There is no question of rivalry,” said Alliot-Marie in the sidelines of a meeting of EU foreign and defence ministers in Brussels which secured pledges from member governments to be made in the Ethiopian capital.

Concretely, the EU said it would provide support personnel, training and equipment — including anything from vehicles, weapons and tents — in what the bloc’s Luxembourg presidency said was a “moral obligation towards Africa.”

An estimated 300,00 people have been killed and 2.4 million displaced since the Sudanese government launched a crackdown on an uprising by ethnic rebels in February 2003.

The African Union (AU) will host a meeting on the Darfur crisis Thursday in Addis Ababa, along with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan as well as NATO and EU leaders.

Last month, the pan-African body agreed to increase the size of its Darfur mission from 3,320 to 7,731 by the end of September and appealed to the AU’s 53 members to support the operation with troops and cash.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana noted that four countries — Rwanda, South Africa, Senegal and Nigeria — had offered troops for the Darfur mission, and said the European bloc could for example provide air transport for them.

“As soon as the troops … are ready, we will be ready to transport them to the theatre” of operations, he said.

Supporting the Sudan mission has fueled some tension between the EU and NATO; more precisely, between the United States and France, whose foreign minister Michel Barnier said NATO should not be “the world’s policeman.”