Sudan sees deal on Darfur peacekeepers

June 11, 2007 (KGARTOUM) — Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol said Monday he expects an agreement to be reached soon on the deployment of UN peacekeepers in the troubled Darfur region.

“I am happy to say that the three parties are currently discussing in Addis Ababa the details of a hybrid force and we hope to have an agreement in the coming hours,” Akol told reporters after talks with his French counterpart Bernard Kouchner.

Officials from the United Nations and the African Union are in the Ethiopian capital with Sudanese representatives to weigh a revised deal on the deployment of international troops in Darfur.

Akol said the peackeeping operation must go hand in hand with a political solution to the four-year conflict which has killed at least 200,000 people and forced more than two million from their homes, according to the United Nations.

However, Khartoum contests the figures, saying 9,000 people have died.

Sudan has accepted two of a three-phase plan proposed last year for peacekeeping operations in Darfur but is still to agree to the details of the final phase.

The proposal is for the deployment of a 23,000-strong peacekeeping force to replace the current 7,000 African Union soldiers in the region.

The United Nations wants its own command system but Khartoum wants the force to be under African control.

Kouchner, who is in Khartoum on the last leg of an African tour, stressed the need “to end the very difficult situation faced by civilians in Darfur where there are too many refugees.”

Last month the United States imposed new sanctions over what Washington terms Khartoum’s genocide in Darfur.

(AFP)