US urges UN to quickly finish Darfur planning

Feb 21, 2006 (WASHINGTON) — The Bush administration, under growing pressure from religious groups over Sudan’s Darfur region, urged the United Nations on Tuesday to quickly finish its planning for an international force to help end violence in Darfur.

“We eagerly await the report of the U.N. assessment mission. We’d like it to be as soon as possible just because there’s an urgency to the matter. People are dying in Darfur and we need to act to stop it,” State Department Deputy Spokesman Adam Ereli said.

“We want to move forward — we don’t want to let the logistics and mechanics — it’s important to get that right, but there is an urgency to it,” Ereli added.

On Monday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said he was hoping for a U.N. Security Council resolution on a future U.N. force by the end of this month.

Bolton also chided U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan for not pushing harder to get the planning done for a U.N. force in Darfur, a claim the U.N. denied.

Tens of thousands of people 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.

The U.N. assessment team, including four U.S. military planners, is mapping out what would be needed to help the world body take over from a struggling team of about 7,000 African Union troops in Darfur whose funding is running out.

State Department officials said privately the United Nations was “dragging its feet” with the assessment.

“The United Nations needs to get its act together on this,” said one official, who asked not to be named because of the critical nature of his comments.

While calling for U.N. action, the United States has been noncommittal as to what kind of contribution, if any, it would make to a Darfur peacekeeping mission.

CRITICAL

Annan said before meeting U.S. President George W. Bush last week that a future U.N. peacekeeping force should include nations like the United States, which had the air power and logistics for a new robust, mobile operation to stop the killings, rape and pillaging in Darfur.

Sudan expert John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group called U.S. criticism of the world body “hypocritical.”

“The U.S. has not been forward-leaning on this issue. It’s disingenuous to claim that the United Nations is not doing all it should,” Prendergast said.

He said Christian and Jewish religious leaders were becoming more vocal in urging Washington to do more to end the genocide in Darfur and this was likely spurring Washington to act ahead of midterm elections in Congress in November.

In addition, there was a growing voice on U.S. university campuses, as well as a disinvestment campaign against the Sudanese government.

The Save Darfur Coalition, which consists of more than 150 faith-based, humanitarian and human rights groups, will launch a 22-city speaking tour on Wednesday to raise public pressure on the Bush administration to act in Darfur.

“This tour is designed to educate the American people about the Darfur genocide and to motivate them to turn up the heat on the Bush administration,” said Brian Steidle, a former Marine captain and U.S. representative to the African Union’s peacekeeping mission in Darfur.

Steidle is among those campaigning for Save Darfur Coalition, which starts the speaking tour in Philadelphia on Wednesday and ends with a “Rally to Stop Genocide” on April 30 in Washington D.C. It is part of a campaign to generate 1 million postcards to Bush over Darfur.

(Reuters)