US consider UN component in Darfur peace force : official
Dec 5, 2005 (WASHINGTON) — The United States raised the prospect of the United Nations sending troops to bolster an African Union peace force in Darfur, amid urgent calls to shield civilians from further violence.
US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer said the AU, with 7,000 troops already deployed, would struggle to raise the force to 12,000 men in the strife-torn region of western Sudan.
“For the AU to get from 7,000 to 12,000 is going to be very difficult,” Frazer said, during a briefing for foreign reporters, which followed some calls for NATO to mount a rare mercy mission outside Europe.
“We have to look at other options, to get troops up to about 12,000 — that may include looking at UN troop contributors. The AU hasn’t made that request yet, we certainly are considering it as one of the options.”
Frazer said 12,000 may be a conservative estimate of troops needed to keep the peace in the “large space” of Darfur, underscoring the importance of struggling peace talks between the Khartoum government and rebels in Nigeria.
Most contributors to pan-African peace missions, including Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Senegal and Ethiopia were stretched by deployments elsewhere, she said.
The United States has been alone in characterizing the abuses committed in Darfur as “genocide.”
China, Russia and Algeria have blocked UN attempts to impose effective sanctions either on Sudan or the Khartoum-backed proxy Arab militia Janjaweed, which is accused of staging killings in Darfur.
Frazer spoke as calls mounted in Washington for swift action to safeguard civilians in a conflict which has already claimed 300,000 lives in 33 months.
An independent task force sponsored by The Council on Foreign Relations said that apart from US efforts to broker peace, the international response on Darfur had been “woeful.”
“The United States must press for urgent international action,” said the task force of foreign policy experts, in a new report on US policy in Africa.
“The AU must be convinced that despite its efforts to do so, it is not capable of mobilizing and deploying” the full compliment of peacekeepers.
“The AU is concerned about losing credibility if it seeks outside help in deployment and command. But it risks an even worse loss of credibility if the situation continues to deteriorate.”
The report urged the AU to request the United Nations to authorize a coalition of willing nations to offer a “protective force” including elements from Africa.
It argued that only a “non-UN coalition” could deploy quickly enough and said such a force would need a robust mandate.
One of the co-chairs of the review, former Clinton administration official Anthony Lake, said if the UN could not act fast enough, NATO may be needed.
Task force member Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, in an addition to the report, said “NATO should help the AU in Darfur, with a stated willingness to forcibly protect civilians and use much tougher rules of engagement should the violence not be substantially abated within six months.”
Advocacy group Africa Action meanwhile called on Washington to introduce a resolution at the UN to “re-hat” the AU mission as a UN operation.
The “AU mission lacks the mandate, the troop strength and the logistical capacity to stop the genocide and provide protection to the people of Darfur,” the group said.
Many of those urging action in Washington are haunted by the US failure to intervene and halt the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, when 800,000 mainly minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered.
New focus on Darfur came as the AU tried to bring delegates back to peace talks in Abuja, Nigeria, after a dispute over powersharing threatened to derail their seventh round of consultations.
War broke out in Darfur in February 2003 when rebels began fighting what they say is the political and economic marginalisation of the region’s black African tribes by the Arab-led regime in Khartoum.
The UN has warned Darfur is falling into chaos, with murder, robbery and rape on the increase.
(AFP/ST)