Deployment of 3000 UN support force to start within 3 months
May 9, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — The United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) said on Wednesday that the deployment of some 3,000 UN personnel to reinforce the African Union (AU) force in the western Sudanese region of Darfur would start after six months.
UNMIS Spokesperson Radhia Achouri told a press conference that “You should not expect any of these people to be deployed under the Heavy Support Package (HSP) before six months.”
Approving the HSP last month, the Sudanese government said that the ball in now on the UN court to implement the package, which is the second phase of a UN three-phase plan to deploy a UN-AU hybrid peacekeeping force in Darfur.
In order to start the implementation, “we need the actual groundwork to be done and for that we need the land, we need to provide water resources,” the UNMIS spokesperson stressed.
She added that the UN personnel could not be sent to Darfur if the logistical side that would provide for their actual accommodation and offices were not ready yet with the requirements in terms of security and so on.
On the humanitarian situation in Darfur, the spokesperson said that new displacements continued to be reported throughout Darfur, as result of inter-tribal fighting and militia attacks.
She said that food distributions in Kalma Camp in south Darfur remained suspended since a riot of internally displaced persons ( IDPs) in the camp on April 26.
“The IDPs did not proceed in an orderly fashion and provoked a riot and of course riots present an immediate and obvious threat to the conducting of any operation so this suspended the food distribution,” Achouri added.
She said that weapons and alcohol had been spotted in some IDP camps and various armed groups had also been founded around certain camps.
(Xinhua)