AU will no longer tolerate attacks on its force in Darfur

Nov 10, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — A senior African Union official said AU peacekeepers deployed in Sudan’s war-torn western Darfur region would no longer tolerate attacks on their mission.

“We shall no more tolerate any attacks against AMIS and humanitarian convoys,” visiting AU Peace and Security Commissioner Said Djinnit told journalists in Khartoum.

“We shall no more tolerate statements hostile to the AMIS in Sudan,” he said without elaborating, adding that the AU would soon start publishing details of attacks on its forces in an “objective, neutral and transparent manner.”

“We believe … we should never give up and we believe that we have to give peace a chance,” he said, appealing to recalcitrant rebels who have so far refused to sign up to a peace deal to do so.

“I appeal to all parties in Darfur to put an immediate end to violence and to those who didn’t sign the accord to join the peace process,” he said.

Only one of three Darfur rebel groups has signed up to a 2005 peace deal amid continued attacks on the cash-strapped AU force, known as AMIS.

Djinnit said he hoped talks between the AU, UN Security Council and Khartoum in Addis Ababa on Monday would offer some hope for the violence-wracked region.

The Security Council decided on August 31 to send up to 20,000 UN peacekeepers to Darfur to take over from cash-strapped and ill-equipped AU troops who have failed to halt the bloodshed.

But Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir is adamantly opposed to the deployment of such a force which he views as part a Western attempt to recolonize his country and plunder its abundant oil and other resources.

As a result, efforts by the world community to end the more than three-year-old conflict and resulting humanitarian crisis in Darfur are deadlocked.

Thursday, the United States said it was considering compromises on the make-up of an international peacekeeping force for Darfur.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Washington still wanted United Nations “involvement” in the Darfur force, but he did not reiterate past US insistance the peacekeepers be deployed formally under the world body’s banner.

According to the UN, 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)