NATO calls for strategic partnership with EU on Sudan

LJUBLJANA, May 31 (AFP) — Latest developments in Sudan’s western region of Darfur underline the need for a “genuine strategic partnership” between NATO and the European Union, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said.

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

“The European Union is a genuine security actor, there is no question about it. This is about making the Union a stronger partner, not a counterweight,” De Hoop Scheffer told legislators meeting in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana at a spring session of NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly (PA).

De Hoop Scheffer said he was pleased to have seen in Europe a “greater realism about the challenges that are involved in playing a sustained, meaningful security role, and greater awareness of what NATO already offers.”

He made the remarks commenting on the situation in Darfur and a call sent to the European Union and NATO by the African Union (AU) for their peacekeeping mission in Sudan’s troubled region.

“NATO will answer the call,” and provide logistical support to the African Union peace mission,” De Hoop Scheffer said and added that would mean “participating in air-lifts, transporting extra forces the African Union needs in Darfur from the countries where they come from, all from Africa.”

He added “NATO is not going to put combat troops on the ground in Darfur but provide other forms of support.”

“The African Union is very much on the lead, that way it should stay. It is an African mission but NATO will assist the AU in the fulfillment of this mission,” De Hoop Scheffer told journalists after meeting Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa.

At its plenary session Tuesday, NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly discussed the situation in Darfur and adopted a declaration backing the international community’s efforts to achieve peace in the Sudanese region.

“The PA encourages the European Union and NATO to work together in a spirit of cooperation and complementarity to provide the requisite logistical and financial support in areas such as strategic airlift, training in command and control, in operations planning,” the PA statement said.

The two-year-old conflict in Darfur between Khartoum, government-backed militias and two rebel groups, has killed between 180,000 and 300,000 people and displaced more than two million and is considered to be one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.