UN’s Annan asked to plan for peacekeepers in Sudan
By Evelyn Leopold
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 10 (Reuters) – The U.N. Security Council asked Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Friday to plan a peacekeeping mission in Sudan if combatants sign a comprehensive agreement ending 20 years of civil war.
In a British-drafted statement, the council, at a public meeting, asked Annan to “initiate preparatory work” on how the United Nations could support implementation of a peace pact.
U.N. officials anticipated that plans might call for several thousand troops and several hundred military observers.
The Sudanese government and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement resumed talks in Kenya on Tuesday aimed at ending Africa’s longest civil war, which has cost the lives of some 2 million people.
On Sept. 25, they reached a key agreement on how to deploy their armed forces during a six-year transitional period.
In broad terms, the civil war pits rebels from the mostly animist and Christian south against the Islamist government in the north. The conflict is complicated by other issues including oil, race and ethnicity.
The United States, Britain and Norway form a “troika” of advisers on Sudan and Washington is considering removing Sudan from its list of “state sponsors of terrorism” if a peace agreement is reached.
In July 2002, the government and the rebels reached a deal known as the Machakos Protocol, under which the government accepted that inhabitants of the south could vote for self-determination after six years.
“The Security Council looks forward to the successful conclusion of a comprehensive peace agreement, based on the Machakos Protocol,” the council’s statement said.
France earlier in the week had hesitated because it first wanted to see a U.N. peacekeeping operation in the West African nation of Ivory Coast, where French soldiers are helping to quell violence, diplomats said.
The United Nations has fielded troops in nearby Sierra Leone and Liberia, but has left Ivory Coast, part of the same conflict, to the French.
French diplomats denied they had linked the two operations but said they wanted some 1,200 West African peacekeepers in Ivory Coast to be come under the U.N. umbrella and be paid by all U.N. members. French troops, they said, would continue to be paid by France.