Turf wars snag US, Europe on Darfur mission

By Mark John

BRUSSELS, June 7 (Reuters) – Defence chiefs from the United States and Europe will seek at a NATO meeting on Thursday to end a weeks-long dispute threatening to delay air transport vital to boosting peace efforts in Sudan’s Darfur region.

African Union (AU) commission chairman Alpha Oumar Konare (L) addresses a joint news conference with NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer at the end of a meeting at the NATO headquarters in Brussels May 17, 2005. (Reuters)

The snag is a turf-war tussle between Washington and some European capitals over who should coordinate offers of help to the African Union as it seeks to triple its Darfur mission to some 7,700 troops by late-September.

Fears are rising that if the row is not resolved soon, the onset of the rainy season in Darfur could undermine operations on the ground just as the new troops arrive.

“It’ll be up to our political leaders to find the right solution,” General James Jones, the top U.S. soldier in Europe, told a news briefing ahead of Thursday’s meeting of NATO defence ministers in Brussels.

“This is a humanitarian mission and I think we need to get on with it. As soon as we get through this organisational hurdle we’ll be on our way,” said Jones, saying his aim was to start the airlift operation from July 1.

After being approached separately by the AU in April, both NATO and the European Union pledged to come up with offers of airlift and other support to African troops unable to get to Darfur under their own steam.

The AU appeals promptly reawakened transatlantic tensions over Europe’s defence ambitions, with Washington arguing that NATO should coordinate the mission and others — notably France — insisting it be done outside the alliance.

“This is a sad discussion. The poor Africans must be looking at this in bewilderment,” said a senior NATO diplomat.

“If we do not get out of this competitive mindset, we cannot exclude there being a delay,” cautioned the envoy, who requested anonymity.

OVERLAPPING MEMBERSHIPS

NATO nations including the United States, Canada, France and Spain have pledged support to an operation to lift into Darfur eight battalions of extra African troops from Rwanda, Nigeria, South Africa and Senegal.

But France and Spain made their offers of help within an EU package announced last month that includes training, observation missions and air reconnaissance if required.

“The EU has been in Darfur a long time, well before NATO,” said one French diplomat of existing EU financial and political support in the region. “There is no need for NATO to coordinate the EU, or vice versa,” he added.

The diplomat said France wanted coordination between NATO and the EU to be handled by an AU-led office in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, with support from junior NATO and EU officials based there.

Jones, who doubles as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, said he initially proposed that NATO do the coordination but recognised the need to account for the fact that 19 nations are members of both NATO and the EU.

“We need to find a solution so as not to put nations in conflict over which mission they are contributing to,” he said. “From a military point of view, we are not talking about a very difficult mission.”