Annan launches last-ditch push for big Darfur force

Dec 18, 2006 (UNITED NATIONS) — U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who leaves office in less than two weeks, is making a last-ditch effort to convince Sudan to accept a much stronger peacekeeping force in Darfur, U.N. diplomats said on Monday.

Annan told the U.N. Security Council he was naming former General Assembly President Jan Eliasson of Sweden as a special envoy to Sudan, to serve during the transition to incoming U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon of South Korea, who takes over as secretary-general on Jan. 1, council diplomats said.

Annan was also sending a top aide, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, to Khartoum to pin down the government’s position on a U.N. proposal to build up the African Union mission already in Darfur with substantial U.N. resources in a proposed “hybrid” force, he told Ban and council members at an informal meeting.

Ould-Abdallah, who was expected to arrive in Khartoum on Wednesday, would also bring a message from Annan to Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, following up on a weekend telephone conversation between the two men, diplomats attending the closed-door meeting said.

“We need now some concrete decisions. We need now to move. We very much hope that this letter from the secretary-general to President Bashir will help us move forward because concrete decisions must be taken now,” French U.N. Ambassador Jean-Marc de la Sabliere told reporters.

The United Nations has been trying without much success to persuade Bashir to accept the deployment of as many as 22,500 troops in Darfur, building on the 7,000 African Union troops now there.

KHARTOUM VETO?

The African Union force is seen as too small, underfunded and ill-equipped to protect civilians and enforce a widely ignored cease-fire in the Western Sudanese region where four years of fighting among rebels, Sudanese forces and pro-government militia has killed more than 200,000 people and driven more than 2.5 million villagers from their homes and into squalid camps.

The Security Council has authorized a much larger force but Bashir has strongly resisted U.N. troops, saying they were driven by colonialism.

Bashir more recently has indicated Khartoum would accept an African Union force financed and supported logistically and otherwise by the United Nations.

But Bashir later wrote Annan a letter saying he wanted a tripartite commission to approve any troops coming into Darfur, a move that would in effect give Khartoum a veto over troop numbers and the force composition.

In their weekend telephone conversation, Bashir told Annan that his council of ministers had formally approved the African Union plan for a hybrid force, diplomats said, quoting Annan.

But they said Ould-Abdallah’s trip was meant to nail down precisely what the Khartoum government meant by that approval.

“Confidence has to emanate also from the other side, and I am not so sure,” said Ghanaian U.N. Ambassador Nana Effah-Apenteng when asked whether the call had left Annan and the council more confident that Khartoum would actually approve the hybrid force they sought for Darfur.

(Reuters)