New chief of AU-UN Mission to Darfur meets Sudanese officials
July 6, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — The new chief of the African Union mission to Darfur has arrived in Khartoum to meet Sudanese officials and prepare for a joint peacekeeping force with the U.N., the A.U. said Friday.
The men are initially seeking to become “familiarized with the situation on the ground,” said A.U. spokesman Noureddine Mezni.
Adad and Agwai are also designated to lead a planned “hybrid force” of some 23,000 African and U.N. peacekeepers to end four years of bloodshed in Sudan’s western Darfur region, the A.U. and U.N. said.
The Sudanese government resisted for months a push for the U.N. to replace the overwhelmed A.U. force of 7,000 currently in Darfur, but finally agreed in June to a compromise deal for the U.N. to deploy jointly with the A.U.
Although the hybrid mission’s leadership is now in place in Sudan, the U.N. must vote on final authorization and nail down member state contributions before the force can be deployed to Darfur, where over 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been displaced since 2003, when local rebels took up arms against the government.
U.N. officials said they didn’t expect the first U.N. peacekeepers to deploy before September or October.
They said it was unlikely the hybrid force would be fully operational in Darfur in 2007 because of the difficulty of getting nations to commit troops and funding.
(AP)