EU digs into pockets for new AU Darfur funding

May 25, 2007 (BRUSSELS) — The European Union threw a cash lifeline to the African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur on Friday, agreeing to divert 40 million euros ($54 million) of development funds to keep the operation going.

The EU budget earmarked to fund the mission had already run out of funds, so the 27-member bloc had to get the green light from partner countries in the developing world to use cash elsewhere in its aid coffers.

“This was urgently needed,” a spokesman for the European Commission said of the agreement at talks between EU ministers and counterparts from the Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific Region (ACP) countries.

“It is intended for the transition period until we get the hybrid force,” he said of plans to turn the 7,000-strong African force, which has failed to halt four years of violence, into an AU-UN operation of 23,000 troops, police and other personnel.

Some 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million driven from their homes in a conflict sparked when non-Arab rebels took up arms, accusing the government of not heeding their plight.

The Sudanese government armed some Arab militia, known as Janjaweed, who have raped, killed and pillaged in a bout of violence that some Western official say amounts to genocide.

The EU has already given some 400 million euros to the AU mission but has asked other donors to come forward to ensure the smooth transition to the hybrid force, whose deployment Khartoum is accused of trying to delay.

The United Nations and the African Union this week drew up plans for the hybrid force, outlining various combinations of security forces needed to protect the tens of thousands living in camps and to patrol humanitarian supply routes under attack.

The plan still needs to be approved by the U.N. Security Council before it is submitted to the Sudanese government.

(Reuters)