Arab leaders fail to fix amount for Darfur aid

Mar 30, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Arab leaders meeting in Khartoum pledged to help finance an African peacekeeping force in the troubled Sudanese region of Darfur but dropped an initial plan to provide 150 million dollars in aid.

A summit resolution had initially offered 150 million dollars to an African Union mission but the figure was removed in the final text adopted Wednesday, leaving the amount to the discretion of Arab League member states.

“This ambiguity says a lot about the Arabs’ inability to contradict the Americans and about their respect to promises they make to other Arabs,” a Palestinian delegate said, adding that Somalia was still waiting to receive a 26-million-dollar aid package promised in 2005.

An Arab diplomat who has attended several Arab summits in the past told AFP that “all Arab summits show political and financial support, but experience has proven that words are rarely followed by acts.”

Only 14 out of the 22 Arab heads of state took part in the two-day summit.

NATO, meanwhile, said Wednesday it has accepted a UN request to consider extending support for the AU mission and the possible follow-on UN mission.

NATO already provides logistical support and training for the 7,000-strong AU peacekeepers, whose mission was earlier this month renewed until October.

The AU is almost entirely dependent on foreign donations to pay for the force and earlier this month the UN called for the speeding up of plans for the despatch of UN peacekeepers.

Sudan, however, has objected to such a move.

Khartoum’s soldiers and militias have been fighting Darfur rebels since 2003 in a conflict that has killed an estimated 300,000 people and displaced two million more.

The AU force, which was deployed in 2004, has been hampered by poor funding and inadequate resources, and has been unable to contain the escalating bloodshed in Darfur, a region in western Sudan that is the size of France.

(ST/AFP)