Sudan to deploy forces along with AU troops in Darfur
Sept 25, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan will deploy new integrated forces in Darfur to work alongside African Union peacekeepers in providing security in the region, President Omar al-Beshir said late Sunday.
The integrated units of “the army, police and security forces will be responsible for keeping peace and stability in Darfur region,” said Beshir.
These units will operate in the presence of the African Union forces to which he said his government “will not accept any substitute,” reiterating his opposition to a proposed transition to a UN force.
“We continue supporting the African forces and the UN can support those forces logistically and materially,” said Beshir, slamming the UN force as “an American-engineered conspiracy to turn the Sudan into another Iraq.”
Last month, the Security Council approved the dispatch of a 20,000-strong UN contingent to replace an ill-equipped and cash-strapped African Union force which has failed to end more than three years of violence sparked by a revolt among Darfur’s mostly black African population.
A meeting of potential troop contributors to the UN mission was expected to take place Monday at UN headquarters in New York.
The Sudanese president disputed allegations that the situation in the region was worsening, and challenged reported casualty figures for the conflict.
“Those parties which allege 300,000 people were killed in the conflict, are lying and I defy anyone to prove that figure. The number of the dead all through the conflict has not exceeded 10,000 on both government and rebel sides,” Beshir asserted.
“I defy anyone to show me a single village that has been bombarded as those parties claim,” he said, adding that those allegations “are intended to find justifications” for deployment of UN forces in Darfur.
He said the security situation is now calm in most parts of the region.
Beshir said his government would endeavor to “rally all political forces, including the opposition, around our national cause” of blocking the deployment of UN forces in the country.
The president stressed that his government would not accept UN peacekeepers, even if the resolution is amended to drop provisions such as those calling for reorganization of the police and judiciary, to which he is particularly opposed.
Beshir also said his government had decided to impose as of Monday travel restrictions on US diplomats in the country, limiting them to movement within 25 kilometers (15 miles) of the center of the capital Khartoum, in response to similar restrictions imposed on Sudanese diplomats in the United States.
(AFP/ST)