Skeptical, US says no precondtions for Darfur force
March 30, 2007 (WASHINGTON) — March 30, 2007 (WASHINGTON) — The US responded skeptically Friday to reports that Sudan has backed down in its rejection of AU-Un force for Darfur. Washington said Khartoum didn’t give public indication of dropping its preconditions to deploy Darfur peacekeeping force.
Saudi officials said Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir announced the “breakthrough” decision Wednesday during a meeting with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on the sidelines of an Arab League summit in Riyadh.
According to Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal, Bashir reaffirmed an agreement reached last November in Addis Ababa, to allow UN soldiers to provide material and logistical support to African Union troops deployed in Darfur.
Bashir had backed away from that agreement by putting strict limits on any UN role in Darfur, prompting the United States and European countries to begin drawing up wide-ranging new sanctions to impose on the Khartoum government.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Washington needed more information from Ban about exactly what Bashir agreed in their meeting in order to decide whether to press ahead of the sanctions.
“We want to understand what the conversation was like in Riyadh, if there is anything there we can build upon,” McCormack told reporters.
“To this point, the Sudanese have not given any indication or any really public indication that they’re dropping any preconditions or they’re ready to allow to follow up on the Addis agreement,” he said.
McCormack said Washington was leaving the sanctions option open, given Bashir’s record of not following up on promised actions.
“In terms of taking any further steps, sanctions or other types of actions, those are decisions were going to take base upon the situation as we see it, and there are a variety of different variables that go into that,” he said.
He also rejected Sudanese concerns that the UN force could be used to capture Sudanese officials sought by the International Criminal Tribunal for crimes against humanity in Darfur.
“There are concerns about this force being a posse to arrest war criminals in Khartoum. That is not the case,” McCormack said. “The case is this force is focused on stabilizing the situation in Darfur.”
The November agreement called for a three-phase deployment of a “hybrid” AU-UN force, with the first two phases involving UN troops providing logistical and material support to the African peacekeepers.
The sticking point has been the third phase which envisions 17,000 UN troops and 3,000 police that Bashir has adamantly rejected.
The meeting held late Wednesday on the sidelines of an Arab summit in Riyadh was also attended by Arab League chief Amr Musa and the head of the African Union’s executive arm, Alpha Oumar Konare, and followed a meeting between Ban and Bashir earlier in the day.
The participants “agreed on the shared need to move expeditiously ahead with the AU-UN peacekeeping operation,” in Darfur, a UN statement said.
The hybrid AU-UN force is meant to take over peacekeeping in Darfur from 7,000 AU troops who have failed to stop the bloodshed in the western Sudanese region, whose area is roughly equal to the size of France.
According to the United Nations, at least 200,000 people have died and more than two million been displaced since the conflict between rebels, government forces and a government-backed Arab militia erupted in Darfur in February 2003.
(AFP)