NATO-led force in Darfur would be ‘recipe for disaster’
Feb 28, 2006 (UNITED NATIONS) — United Nations special envoy Jan Pronk warned here Tuesday that sending a NATO-led force to protect civilians in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region would be “a recipe for disaster”.
Pronk, the UN special representative in Sudan, also spoke of rising anti-UN feelings in Khartoum as authorities there fiercely oppose plans to replace an ineffective African Union force in Darfur by a mobile, more robust UN contingent.
Noting that while Khartoum did not oppose the use of NATO logistical capabilities to support a Darfur operation, it was dead against deploying a NATO-led force on its soil.
A NATO-led force “would be a recipe for disaster … People would really start a Jihad (holy war) against it,” Pronk said.
“The (Khartoum) government is taking a very strong position against the transition (to the UN) and that is new,” he noted. “There is fear in Khartoum that the transition will be a conspiracy which will bring Sudan into the same situation as Iraq.”
“The climate in Khartoum against the UN is heating up very strongly. There are threats, warnings,” Pronk said. “They speak of recolonization, invasion, imperialism, (a) conspiracy against the Arab-Islamic world.”
Pronk also cautioned that the African Union Peace and Security Council might also be reconsidering its January decision in principle to replace the African Union force, known as AMIS, by a robust UN force as demanded by UN chief Kofi Annan.
The 7,000-strong AMIS, which was deployed in 2004, has been suffering from poor funding and inadequate resources to contain the escalating bloodshed in Sudan’s western region.
“We do not know whether the African Union will reconfirm its decision (at its March 10 meeting). That is not certain any more,” Pronk said.
Meanwhile two key members of the AU, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, Tuesday also rejected replacing the AU force in Darfur by UN peackeepers.
The two leaders “stressed the importance of the African force’s presence in Darfur without any outside intervention,” the Egyptian ambassador to Libya Mohammad Rafaat al-Tahtawi told reporters after talks in the Libyan town of Misrata.
The meeting came ahead of the March 10 meeting of the AU Peace and Security Council in Addis Ababa, which is expected to discuss proposals to transfer responsibility for the Darfur force to the United Nations.
The AU has said it has no funds to operate beyond March and has been considering a handover of its Darfur mission to the UN.
The UN Security Council in February approved contingency planning for UN peacekeepers to take over from the AU force but, despite strong pressure from Western governments, Khartoum has so far remained hostile to the deployment of UN troops there.
This weekend, Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir warned Darfur would become a “graveyard” for any foreign military contingent entering the region against Khartoum’s will.
The war in Darfur broke out in February 2003, when black ethnic groups launched a rebellion against Khartoum, which was brutally repressed by the Arab Islamist regime of President Omar al-Beshir.
The combined effect of the war and one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises has left up to 300,000 people dead and an estimated 2.4 million displaced.
(ST/AFP)