UN to support AU Darfur mission with 200 staff
Oct 9, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — About 200 U.N. military and civilian staff will deploy to Darfur to support an African Union peace monitoring mission after Khartoum rejected a plan to send thousands of U.N. troops into western Sudan.
A joint U.N.-AU letter to President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, seen by Reuters on Monday, outlined 109 U.N. military support, 23 logistical staff, 33 U.N. police advisors and 25 civilian support staff to be sent to Darfur.
“U.N. staff deployed to Darfur … would be fully dedicated to supporting the African Union operation and will operate under the operational control of (the AU),” the letter said.
Khartoum has rejected a U.N. Security Council resolution authorising a U.N. takeover of the cash-strapped AU mission in violent Darfur where experts say 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million forced to flee their homes.
“It is understood that the overall planned support shall be conducted in transparency and with the full cooperation of the government of Sudan,” the letter added.
Khartoum says it welcomes this support. The proposal looks to be a short-term fix for the deadlock over the deployment of U.N. troops between Khartoum and the international community.
While diplomatic wrangling continues in New York, the struggling AU force in Darfur has failed to stop an escalation in violence since a May peace deal, signed by only one of three rebel negotiating factions.
The United Nations human rights chief said on Monday “several hundred” civilians — far more than first thought — may have died in a late August attack by militias in the south of Sudan’s violent Darfur region.
The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Louise Arbour, said the attack on tribes of “African” origin in the area of Buram appeared to have been carried out with the “knowledge and material support” of the government.
Army officials in Khartoum were not immediately available to comment on the report.
SOURCES QUESTIONED
But Sudan’s Justice Minister Mohamed Ali al-Mardi said Arbour’s office were not using reliable sources, adding that the government did not back one side against another in Darfur.
“The sources … are not reliable and they have become very ready to accept whatever is said to them,” he told Reuters in Khartoum. “They declare what they have heard and after some time it turns out to be not true,” he added.
More than 3-1/2 years ago mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms accusing central government of neglecting remote Darfur. The ensuing rape, pillage and murder created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, called genocide by Washington.
Khartoum denies genocide. A U.N. commission of investigation concluded that while some individuals may have acted with genocidal intent, there was insufficient evidence of a large-scale orchestrated genocide.
Bashir and his dominant political party reject U.N. forces comparing it to a Western invasion and an attempt to recolonise Sudan.
Critics say the government fears U.N. troops may be used to arrest officials likely to be indicted by the International Criminal Court investigating alleged war crimes in the region.
The African Union mission in Darfur has been extended to Dec. 31 but without a quick infusion of equipment, manpower and funding officials say they will not be able to control the violence there.
A U.N. bulletin in Khartoum said on Monday armed bandits attacked an international aid agency compound in Suleia in West Darfur. After two hours of gun battles with police, the attackers fled.
Last week more than 10,000 Darfuris fled renewed fighting in South Darfur, and on Saturday government forces clashed again on the Sudan-Chad border with rebels who did not sign the May deal.
At least 12 aid workers have been killed in Darfur since the May accord.
(Reuters)