US urges Sudan to arrest AU killers, accept UN takeover
Aug 21, 2006 (WASHINGTON) — The United States called on Sudan to arrest and prosecute the killers of two African Union peacekeepers in Darfur and to drop its opposition to deployment of a robust UN military force in the war-torn region.
State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said the slaying Saturday of the two Rwandan soldiers in an attack that also wounded several members of the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) could not go unpunished.
“This violence is another indication of the lack of security that exists in Darfur, which continues to result in the deaths of innocent civilians and aid workers and hinders the distribution of life-saving humanitarian assistance to areas of Darfur,” he said.
“We call on the Sudanese government to cooperate fully with AMIS, to arrest those who participated in the attack, and prosecute them,” Gallegos said.
The US and Britain presented a draft resolution to the United Nations last week calling for deployment of 17,000 UN peacekeepers to Darfur, despite threats by the central Sudanese government to attack any UN troops who go to the area.
The UN force would take over from the ill-equipped and under-funded African Union mission which has proved unable to prevent killings, rape and internal displacement of civilians in the region.
Gallegos said work was continuing to finalize the UN resolution, which he said “must deploy without delay”.
“Only a large, mobile, fast-reacting, and robust UN force, with African Union forces forming its core and to include Africans in key leadership positions, is capable of stopping the fighting,” he said.
“We call on the government of Sudan to do its part to enable this transition to move forward,” he said.
Decades of ethnic tensions in Darfur erupted into all-out violence in 2003 when ethnic minorities took up arms against the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum to fight for autonomy and a greater share of the region’s resources.
The combined effect of war and famine has left up to 300,000 people dead in the region and displaced more than two million.
(ST/AFP)