Sudan VP secures Syrian support in Darfur standoff

Nov 10, 2006 (DAMASCUS) — Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Mohammed Taha won Syrian support for his regime’s staunch opposition to the deployment of UN peacekeepers in the war-ravaged western region of Darfur.

“President (Bashar) al-Assad affirmed Syria’s support for the national unity of Sudan and its efforts to resolve the crisis in Darfur,” the official SANA news agency said.

Vice President Faruq al-Shara expressed his “rejection of efforts to internationalize the crisis.”

The Khartoum regime of President Omar al-Beshir has repeatedly rejected a US-sponsored Security Council resolution calling for up to 20,000 UN peacekeepers to take over from an overstretched African Union force in Darfur.

But its stance has drawn criticism from its former rebel partners in a national unity government set up by a January 2005 peace deal that ended two decades of civil war in the south.

According to the United Nations, at least 200,000 people have died from the combined effects of fighting, famine and disease in Darfur since the ethnic minority rebels rose up in early 2003, drawing a scorched earth response from the government. Some sources say the toll is much higher.

(AFP)