Sudan says African troops sufficient for Darfur
September 21, 2007 (UNITED NATIONS) — Sudan insisted Friday that African countries have offered enough troops for a peacekeeping force in Darfur despite U.N. concerns that the mission will not be effective without specialized contributions from outside the continent.
Meeting for more than four hours, Senior diplomats from 26 countries called on nations to pledge financial and other aid to the planned African Union-United Nations force of up to 26,000 troops and police for Sudan’s western region.
Four years of warfare have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and driven 2.5 million people from homes in the region.
“Everybody recognizes that this is just the beginning of the hard part — deployment and peacemaking,” said Mark Malloch Brown, Britain’s minister of state for Africa.
“Violence has not abated,” he said, referring to renewed fighting this week in Darfur, especially in overcrowded camps for people chased out of their homes.
However, the composition of the peacekeeping force has revealed splits over the deployment of non-African troops, though both U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and African Union Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare, who chaired the closed-door talks, denied this was the case.
U.N. officials said Sudan, backed by the AU, had turned down infantry from Thailand and Uruguay. Khartoum even rejected an engineering unit from Norway, although it pledged to allow non-African units for specialized tasks.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and African Union Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare, who co-chaired the meeting, both downplayed any differences on the composition of the peacekeeping force, saying they were technical in nature.
“This issue should not be viewed as some difference on political issues,” Ban said. “These kinds of technical issues will be able to resolved through technical discussion.”
“We don’t think Sudan has anything to be afraid of with respect to allowing and agreeing to some of these non-African specialized niche forces to participate in generating a peacekeeping force for Darfur,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte told reporters.
He said this would not “violate the principle of a predominantly African force” the United Nations has approved.
Sudan’s Foreign Minister, Akol Lam, said African nations have supplied “190 percent” of the ground troops needed and other nations could help with logistics as well as funds.
Konare agreed, saying, “We have confirmed that we have sufficient offers on all fronts,” adding: “I am sure that we will reach understanding on the very technical matters that we are discussing.”
But Jean-Marie Guehenno, the U.N. undersecretary-general for peacekeeping, has said not all African contingents had the proper equipment or training for various functions.
Rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated government in 2003, accusing it of discrimination and neglect. The government has been accused of backing Arab militias responsible for many of the conflict’s atrocities, though it denies the charges.
New fighting broke out this week despite the government’s pledge to commit to a halt in hostilities in the run-up to the Libya talks.
(Reuters/AP)