Sudan rejects UN Command of Darfur peacekeeping force
Nov 27, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Sudanese President Omar Hassan al- Bashir today rejected a proposal for the United Nations to assume joint command over a peacekeeping force in Darfur and said he would only accept UN assistance to African Union troops.
Addressing an international media conference in Khartoum on Monday, al-Bashir said any peacekeeping force should have African troops and be under African command. The UN and the AU have proposed creating a hybrid force of about 20,000 soldiers and police that would operate under joint AU-UN leadership.
“There is no talk about accepting the hybrid force because we have rejected it in principle,” Bashir said in Khartoum. “Troops in Darfur should be part of the AU and under command of the AU.”
The Sudanese leader’s response deals the peacekeeping plan backed by the U.S., U.K. and UN a setback with only about a month left in the mandate for the existing African Union force in Darfur.
Bashir said the Western media exaggerated the Darfur conflict, and he declared that no more than 9,000 people had died in the violence, a figure that is 1,000 less than he cited at a Sept. 25 press conference.
The UN says that as many as 200,000 people have died in Darfur since the war erupted in February 2003 and that the region is the scene of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on 16 November that Sudan’s government agreed “in principle” to allow the UN to provide $21 million in aid and advisers, equipment and logistics to help strengthen the 7,000-person African Union peacekeeping force. Sudan said it was still studying a third element of the UN proposal, to create the joint AU-UN force.
“UN troops have never come to Africa and played a positive role,” Bashir said. “Sudan should not be the first African country to be re-colonized,” he said later.
“The focus should be on implementing the agreement, and we do not accept the referral of the AU mission to UN troops,” he said.
He added: “After the signing of the Abuja Agreement it was expected that the focus would be on supporting and implementing the agreement and other parties joining the agreement. But talk immediately started on replacing the AU troops in Darfur with UN troops, and it became obvious to us that the aim was not for peace but another agenda on this issue, and if the aim was for peace in Darfur, we have already signed the agreement.”
FALSE INFORMATION
Western news reports have provided “false information about genocide and mass rapes” in Darfur, the president said.
Bashir denied that his government was rearming pro- government militias in Darfur known as the Janjaweed, calling them “bandits” that his police forces were pursuing.
Earlier today, Bashir’s special assistant on Darfur, former rebel leader Minni Minnawi, said the government is providing arms and equipment to the Janjaweed.
“Everybody knows that the government is rearming the Janjaweed,” Minnawi, who signed a peace agreement with the government in May, told reporters. “I am calling on the government to call them back and to disarm them.”
HUMANITARIAN SITUATION IN DARFUR
Sudanese President al-Bashir has denied that there is a humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur. He said humanitarian statistics on child deaths in the Darfur were the same as in any other parts of Sudan.
“We do not say that there is no problem and that there are refugees and displaced, but any talk of a humanitarian crisis is not true. There has never been starvation in Darfur, nor epidemics and all international organizations statistics as well as UNICEF show that child deaths in Darfur are the same as child deaths in any other part of Sudan.
“They say that more than 200,00 thousand have been killed in Darfur, we affirm that this number is not true and that all our statistics till now, on all the people that have been killed between the army and rebels or between the rebels and different tribes or between the tribes, the number of deaths has not reached 9,000,” he said.
OIL WEALTH
The conflict in Darfur began almost four years ago when rebels demanding a greater share of Sudan’s political power and oil wealth began attacking the government.
Violence has increased since the government and Minnawi’s rebel faction signed a peace agreement in Abuja, Nigeria, on May 5. A new rebel group, known as the National Redemption Front, or NRF, has defeated the army in recent battles, the UN said.
Most of Darfur is peaceful now, and reports of worsening violence are false, Bashir said.
Jan Egeland, the UN’s emergency aid coordinator, said on Nov. 18 that civilians in Darfur are victims of “terror” and that Janjaweed fighters are targeting children.
Escalating fighting in Darfur between the government and the Janjaweed against rebel groups has swelled the number of civilians needing international aid to 4 million, half a million more than last year, according to Egeland.
“For the enemies plotting against Sudan, they have only one issue and that is Darfur,” Bashir said. “Any talk about the deterioration of the situation in Darfur is a lie.”
(ST/Bloomberg)