Sudan FM, UN-AU team discuss Darfur peacekeeping mission
June 10, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — A joint United Nations and African Union team met with Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol to discuss a possible UN peacekeeping role in the war-torn Darfur region.
The meeting came a day after the team, lead by Jean-Marie Guehenno, UN undersecretary general for peacekeeping operations and Said Djinnit, the AU commissioner for peace and security, arrived in the Sudanese capital.
The visit “is aimed at completing the talks begun here earlier by UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to explore ways and means for implementation of the Darfur peace agreement (DPA) and the role that can be played by the UN,” Akol told reporters after the meeting.
Guehenno said the UN was “concerned with supporting peace in Darfur in the same way it is helping, through UNMIS (United Nations Mission in Sudan), in implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement for South Sudan.”
The UN is planning to deploy a robust peacekeeping force in Darfur by the end of the year or the beginning of 2007 to take over from cash-strapped and poorly equipped AU troops monitoring a shaky truce in the region.
Guehenno said that the team was also exploring ways to strengthen the “AU forces in Darfur in the coming stage and finding mechanisms for a possible transition of the AU mandate to the UN.”
Sudan remains opposed to a UN deployment in Darfur, and a foreign ministry spokesman later told reporters that priority ought to be placed on reinforcing the AU’s capabilities.
“Our official position is now to emphasize on the need for strengthening the African Union forces in Darfur,” Jamal Mohamed Ibrahim said.
However, he left the door open for a UN role in the region, saying “there maybe some sort of UN participation complementing the AU role in Darfur.”
But “any UN role in Darfur should be in concert with the DPA which has not provided for any such role by the UN,” he stressed.
The UN-AU team was to split in two groups — a political one that would remain in Khartoum until Tuesday for talks with government officials and a technical one that would depart Sunday on a tour of Darfur region.
Civil war and a humanitarian crisis in Darfur have left 180,000 to 300,000 people dead and 2.4 million people displaced since February 2003.
On May 5, a major faction of the main Darfur rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), signed a peace agreement with Khartoum.
But the AU-sponsored deal, signed in the Nigerian capital Abuja, was rejected by a smaller SLM faction and the rebel Justice and Equality Movement.
(ST)