Envoy sees UN peace force in Sudan’s Darfur by 2007 – report

Jan 26, 2006 (BERLIN) — The United Nations will deploy a peacekeeping force in Sudan’s Darfur region by early 2007, a top U.N. envoy forecast in remarks released Thursday.

Jan Pronk said in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper that he expected the force to be on the ground “in this year or at the start of 2007.”

“That depends on the (U.N.) Security Council, which has not yet reacted to a decision by the African Union. I expect a decision in February,” Pronk was quoted as saying.

Pronk, the top U.N. official for Sudan, earlier this month declared that efforts to bring peace to the vast Darfur region had failed, and called for a U.N. force of up to 20,000 troops to disarm militias and allow more than 2 million displaced people to return to their homes.

The African Union has accepted the need to transform its 7,000-strong peacekeeping force in Darfur into a U.N. force.

An estimated 300,000 people have died in the upheaval — many from hunger and disease — since large-scale fighting broke out in 2003 between ethnic African tribes and Arab militias, whom the Sudanese government is accused of backing.

(AP/ST)