UN chief calls for more authority for African peacekeepers

By MOHAMED OSMAN

KHARTOUM, Sudan, May 28, 2005 (AP) — U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Saturday called for widening the responsibilities of African Union peacekeepers in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region, saying the troops need to take a larger role in protecting the region’s embattled civilians.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan meets with women as he visits Kalma Camp in Nyala, south Darfur, Saturday, May 28, 2005. (AP).

“The security situation in Darfur is not acceptable and as long as the situation there is not acceptable then one has to do more,” Annan said at Khartoum airport after a daylong visit to the region.

Annan said African Union troops were doing a competent job, but would need a broader mandate and more resources to provide protection to the hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced by more than two years of ethnic violence in Darfur.

Annan spent the day in Darfur where he visited the vast Kalma refugee camp in Nyala and a rebel held area, Labadu, some 70 kilometers (40 miles) east of Nyala, where the security situation remains tense.

Only half of Labadu’s 60,000 civilians have returned to the town after militia attacks there last year. The rest still live in camps. Some told Annan they were too scared to return home. He said the situation is better than it was last year but still needs vast improvement.

“What we need is to create a secure environment to encourage people to go back to plant and pick up their lives,” Annan said.

The United Nations has called Darfur the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Annan went from the airport to a meeting with Sudanese vice president Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, where Taha assured the U.N. official that Khartoum is ready for peace talks next month aimed at relieving the emergency, said Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail.

Taha also assured Annan that Sudan agreed to allow the African Union to boost its role in protecting civilians in Darfur, Ismail said.

“We both agreed on the urgency to re-energize the peace negotiation in Darfur,” Annan said.

Earlier Saturday, Annan was briefed by Gov. Al-Haj Atalmannan Idris on tribal reconciliation efforts aimed at restoring social cohesion and improving the life of the residents.

Annan said he made clear to Idris that a humanitarian crisis can only be prevented if farmers are able to return to their land, plant it, cultivate and harvest their crops.

The secretary-general’s three-day visit to Sudan followed his attendance at an international donors conference in Ethiopia, where donors pledged $300 million in cash and more in kind to help the African Union expand its peacekeeping mission in Darfur.

At least 180,000 people have died — many from hunger and disease — and about 2 million others have fled their homes in Darfur to escape the conflict, which erupted when rebels took up arms against what they saw as years of state neglect and discrimination against Sudanese of African origin.

The government is accused of responding with a counterinsurgency campaign in which government-backed Arab militiamen known as Janjaweed committed wide-scale abuses against the African population.

On Sunday, Annan will fly to the southern Sudanese city of Juba to assess the implementation of a peace agreement signed earlier this year between the government and rebels that ended a two-decade civil war.