Sudan’s FM rejets US force in Darfur
Jan 13, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Sudanese government on Friday rejected a suggestion by U.N. head Kofi Annan that U.S. and European troops be sent to Darfur, saying the international community should give more cash to African forces already on the ground.
“We think that the African Union is doing a good job and so far they have not said they are unable to do that job,” Foreign Minister Lam Akol told Reuters.
“Naturally what should happen is to give them the money they want, not to complicate matters by involving another force on the ground,” he said.
The United States supports augmenting African Union forces in Sudan’s western Darfur region with U.N. peacekeepers but has not offered its own troops for such a mission, U.S. officials said on Friday.
“(We support) international troops augmenting AU forces and not replacing them. This is what we did in Liberia,” Jendayi Frazer, the U.S. assistant secretary of state in charge of African affairs, told reporters.
Diplomats said the United States would be hard pushed to find enough troops to send into Darfur given their commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. contribution would likely to be to give logistical support to any force sent in.
One of two main Darfur rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), said it would welcome U.S. troops.
“If the Americans came they would be preferable to the African Union who so far have failed in their duties to protect civilians,” SLA Vice President al-Raya Mahmoud Juma’a said.
“They (the African Union) have enough forces and equipment, but they still cannot do their job and stop the attacks,” he told Reuters from Darfur.
The second rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) said the nationality of the force did not matter, but it was concerned that the AU force needed a stronger mandate and more troops.
“We need more troops with a clearer mandate to protect civilians,” said JEM spokesman Ahmed Hussein.
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said on Thursday he wanted the United States and European countries to help form a tough mobile force to stop the rape, killing and looting in Darfur, western Sudan, which Washington has termed genocide.
FUNDS UNTIL MARCH
The African Union has 7,000 peacekeeping troops in Darfur, a region the size of France, but after an assessment mission there last month, the 53-member African body said it only had enough funds until March.
The AU depends on donor countries to fund its mission to monitor a tentative truce in the region, where violence has driven more than 2 million from their homes.
In a statement seen by Reuters on Friday, the AU said it “expresses its support, in principle, to a transition from (AU) to a UN operation”.
It added it planned to meet before the end of March to make a final decision on any future handover to the United Nations.
Annan said the killings and rape were continuing, and the United Nations had started contingency planning to take over the AU mission, although the African Union and U.N. Security Council would have to agree first.
Asked whether that would include rich countries like the United States and European nations, he said, “Those are the kind of countries with the kind of capabilities we will need, so when the time comes, we will be turning to them.”
“We will work with the U.N. Security Council and other international partners on this issue. Our concern here is to see that there is effective security in Darfur,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
Tens of thousands have been killed in Darfur since mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in early 2003 accusing the central government of neglect. Khartoum denies U.S. charges of genocide, but the International Criminal Court is investigating alleged war crimes there.
If there were to be any significant deployment of U.S. troops in Darfur, it would be Washington’s first major foray into African peacekeeping since it quit Somalia in 1994.
But Russia and China, whose support would be needed in any Security Council resolution to deploy additional troops, have traditionally opposed sending non-African forces to Darfur.
Akol said the AU was a peace monitoring force and Sudan did not need the military power of the United States in Darfur.
“What would they do other than what the African forces can do?” he said. “We are not looking for a force who is going to fight,” he added.
(Reuters)