UN Security Council gearing up for imminent Darfur vote
July 30, 2007 (UNITED NATIONS) — The UN Security Council is gearing up for an imminent vote on a draft resolution authorizing joint African Union-UN peacekeeping in Darfur, Britain’s outgoing UN envoy said Monday.
“I expect by the end of today, it (the text) will be in blue (meaning ready for an imminent vote),” Emyr Jones Parry, the lead sponsor of the draft, told reporters.
Last-minute bargaining within the 15-member council came as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and US President George W. Bush stepped up the pressure for a quick vote on the draft.
“I’ve agreed with the president (Bush) that we step up our pressure to end the (Darfur) violence that has displaced two million people, made four million hungry and reliant on food aid, and murdered 200,000 people,” Brown told a press conference at the US presidential retreat in Camp David, Maryland.
“We’re agreed on expediting the UN resolution for a joint UN-African Union peace force. We’re agreed on encouragement for early peace talks, a call to cease violence on the ground, an end to aerial bombing of civilians, and support for economic development if this happens and further sanctions if this does not happen,” he added.
“We are under instruction to do it as soon as possible,” a Western diplomat here said, saying a council vote could come as early as Tuesday or Thursday.
Brown is to visit UN headquarters early Tuesday for talks with UN chief Ban Ki-moon and to deliver a major foreign policy speech on the world’s progress toward meeting poverty-reduction targets under the Millenium Development Goals.
Jones Parry said Britain and France circulated a revised version of their draft to council colleagues late Saturday and the text was discussed further by the council early Monday.
And after what he called a “productive meeting” with the co-sponsors earlier Monday, US Ambassador to the UN Zalmay Khalilzad, who backs the text, said: “We are very close but there are still negotiations that need to take place and capitals need to be consulted.”
“Our understanding is that most of the concerns have been taken into account,” an African diplomat said. “We are happy with the text.”
He said the sponsors further softened their text by dropping a paragraph that would have “strongly” condemned “the continued violations” of the Darfur Peace Agreement (signed last year between Khartoum and the main Darfur rebel group).
In another bid to placate Sudan and its supporters on the council, the sponsors decided they no longer would invoke Chapter Seven of the UN Charter to authorize the joint UN-AU force to “take all necessary action” to monitor whether arms are present in Darfur in violation of UN resolutions, the diplomat added.
Last Tuesday, the sponsors already withdrew a threat of unspecified “further measures” against Sudanese parties that would fail to fulfill their commitments or cooperate fully with the resolution.
The 26,000-strong UN-AU force that will be known as UNAMID is to take over peacekeeping from 7,000 underfunded and ill-equipped to try to end four years of bloodshed during which an estimated 200,000 people have died in Darfur from the combined effect of war and famine.
The Darfur conflict began in 2003 when an ethnic minority rose up against the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum
(AFP)