UN wants to go to Darfur now to help African Union
June 27, 2006 (UNITED NATIONS) — The United Nations should immediately beef up the African Union force in Darfur with communications, transport and other help in preparation for its own operation, the head of U.N. peacekeeping said on Tuesday.
Although Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has rejected a U.N. force, the world body might be able to gain a foothold in Darfur by augmenting the African Union’s 7,000-strong monitoring operation, said U.N. Undersecretary-General Jean-Marie Guehenno.
“We believe that the United Nations can help the African mission,” he told reporters. “We did not get any objection from the government of Sudan so we are going to work in earnest on that.”
“If there is an evolution in the position of the government of Sudan, we will be in a much better position to deploy a U.N. mission,” Guehenno said.
“The people of Darfur are too important to let go,” he said, referring to the tens of thousands who have been killed in three years of warfare and the 2.3 million people driven into squalid camps in Darfur and neighboring Chad.
Guehenno, in briefing the Security Council on his recent military assessment mission in Darfur, proposed building a communications system and strengthening command and control capabilities.
“This could mean an enhancement of the U.N. presence in the region, through an augmented (U.N.) office in Darfur, with a significant number of United Nations staff fully dedicated to supporting the African mission in Sudan,” he told the council, according to his text obtained by Reuters.
Guehenno said that while Bashir rejected a U.N. force, he “accepted the principle” of U.N. support for African troops, and “continued U.N. humanitarian … activities in Darfur.”
U.N. humanitarian officials report that U.N. agencies have limited or no access to about a third of the homeless in Darfur — about 600,000 people.
The Darfur conflict erupted in 2003 when mostly non-Arab tribes took up arms, accusing the Arab-dominated government of neglect. Khartoum retaliated by arming mainly Arab militia, known as Janjaweed, who began a campaign of murder, rape, arson and plunder.
NEVER SAY NEVER
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan intends to speak to Bashir at an African Union summit in Banjul, Gambia, this weekend and get other African leaders to tell him the union did not want to lead the operation beyond this year.
“So far the answer has not been positive, but the dialogue continues,” Annan told reporters.
But “in politics, words like ‘never’ and ‘forever’ do not exist,” Annan said. “We have seen leaders say lots of things, but they also find reasons and ways to adapt, to shift, to change direction, and often forget that they have used the word ‘never.'”
U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said “the sooner the U.N. takes control of the mission in Darfur, the better.”
But he said it was the responsibility of African Union to bring “Sudan’s leaders into compliance with their own commitment under the Darfur peace agreement.”
The United Nations already has 10,000 peacekeepers in southern Sudan to monitor a major peace agreement that ended decades of civil war. But a force in Darfur would need a tougher mandate and more mobility.
(Reuters)