EU says runs out of cash for Darfur peacekeepers
June 29, 2007 (PARIS) — European Union funding for an African peacekeeping force in Darfur has run out, and the United States and Arab League should help cover the costs until a replacement force arrives, the EU’s aid chief said on Friday.
“At the Commission level we are dry and we cannot find any more additional resources,” European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid Louis Michel told a news conference.
The Commission and EU states have given over 400 million euros ($537.8 million) to the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) since it was deployed to Sudan’s violent western Darfur region in 2004 to try to ease the humanitarian crisis there.
The United Nations has proposed working with the African Union to send a better-equipped force to the area, but Michel said AMIS still needed cash before the new operation started.
“Other donors besides the Commission must find the resources to make the transition from the AMIS force to the African Union/United Nations hybrid force,” Michel said.
“I would like to call on the United States and the Arab League to contribute to financing this transition,” he said.
Diplomats say a resolution to send the new international force could come to a vote at the U.N. Security Council next week, but that peacekeepers could take six months to deploy.
Some 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million driven from their homes in the conflict, which began in 2003 when non-Arab rebels took up arms, accusing the government of ignoring their plight in the remote, arid region. Sudan mobilised Arab militias to quell the revolt.
Some militia members, known locally as Janjaweed, embarked on a campaign of killing, pillage and rape that the United States has said amounts to genocide. Sudan denies it supported the Janjaweed, and calls them outlaws.
Michel attended an international meeting on Darfur in Paris on Monday and said he had also discussed funding for the current AMIS mission with President Nicolas Sarkozy this week.
(Reuters)