UN says ready to help AU troops in Sudan’s Darfur

Sept 30, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — The UN envoy in Sudan said here Saturday that the world body was ready to help African Union (AU) peacekeeping troops in Sudan’s western region of Darfur.

Jan Pronk, Special Representative of the UN secretary general in Sudan, expressed the readiness to reporters after a meeting with Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol.

Pronk told reporters that “the UN is ready to provide necessaryhelps to the AU mission in Darfur.”

He expected that the Sudanese government would soon make a response to a letter sent by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to Khartoum and the AU on the assistances which the UN could provide for the AU forces in Darfur.

Earlier on Thursday, the UN envoy said that a UN peacekeeping mission in Darfur was unlikely to take place soon, and the international community should instead push for the existing African Union mission to be prolonged indefinitely.

But the Sudanese government said on Saturday that it would not accepted an unlimited extension of the AU peacekeeping mission in Darfur, adding that the government only agreed on what had been decided by the AU in its recent meeting in New York.

Last week, the AU Peace and Security Council in a special meeting in New York decided to extend the stay of the AU forces inDarfur until the end of this year, in view of Sudan’s refusal of deploying international peacekeeping forces in the region.

(Xinhua/ST)