3 Asian countries considering contributing to Darfur force
June 16, 2007 (ADDIS ABABA) — China, India and Pakistan are among the countries considering contributing troops to form a joint African Union-U.N. peacekeeping force to go into the Darfur region, South Africa’s envoy to the U.N. said Saturday.
The joint AU-U.N. peacekeeping force will be predominantly African, but if countries from the continent are unable to come up with enough troops, “we will look to other countries to do that as we do in every peacekeeping force,” said Dumisani Kumalo, South Africa’s ambassador to the U.N.
The U.N. department of peacekeeping operations has informed U.N. diplomats, “China, Pakistan, India and others have started looking favorably,” at contributing to the force, Kumalo told journalists at the end of a one-day meeting between U.N. Security Council ambassadors and African Union officials.
The meeting comes four days after Sudan agreed to allow up to 19,000 peacekeepers to take the place of the 7,000-strong AU force now in Darfur. The ill-equipped and underfunded AU force has been unable to stop four years of warfare that have left more than 200,000 dead.
The U.N. and Western governments have been pressing Sudan for months to accept the plan, first crafted and agreed to in November, only for Sudan to backtrack.
The ambassadors and African Union officials would like to see the force in Darfur as soon as possible, said Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry, without giving a timeframe.
On Wednesday, Akuei Bona Malwal, the deputy head of Sudan’s diplomatic mission in Ethiopia, said the force could be in Darfur by October, depending on how quickly the United Nations and African Union are able to get troops and funds.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said that a group of African Union, U.N. and Sudanese officials will work out the details of who will contribute troops to the joint force, when it deploy and how it will be funded.
African Union officials assured the U.N. Security Council delegation, Sudan’s acceptance of the joint force Tuesday “was unconditional,” Khalilzad told journalists. “We will go and talk to the Sudanese government next to hear from them their own perspective on this agreement.”
The U.N. delegation travels to the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, on Sunday.
The ambassadors would also like to see aid agencies work without hindrance in Darfur, and those agencies that have been banned be allowed to resume their work there, Parry said.
International aid workers and officials are regularly expelled or hindered in their work in Darfur by Sudanese authorities.
More than 200,000 people have died in Darfur and 2.5 million chased from their homes since 2003, when local rebels took up arms against the Sudanese government, accusing it of decades of neglect. Sudanese leaders are accused of unleashing the pro-government Arab militia, the janjaweed, to fight them, a charge they deny.