Sudan reserves right to reject AU troops in Darfur.

By Jonathan Wright

CAIRO, Aug 6, 2004 (Reuters) — The African Union has not told Sudan of any plan to deploy 2,000 African troops in Darfur and the government reserves the right to reject such a plan, a Sudanese minister said in an interview published on Friday.

Sudan has let an observer mission of African Union military personnel into Darfur and the AU is now proposing to send 2,000 armed troops with a mandate to protect observers as well as serve as a peacekeeping force in the Western region, where more than one million people have been displaced by conflict.

Sudanese Interior Minister Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein told the London-based Arabic newspaper Asharq al-Awsat that so far the Addis Ababa-based organisation has not made an official request to send troops.

“This is merely talk propagated by the media and we don’t have anything official about it… It would be meaningless if it doesn’t obtain our approval,” he said.

“We will not agree to the presence of any foreign forces, whatever their nationality,” the minister said, using a word for foreign that would not necessarily include Arabs or Africans.

U.N. peacekeeping experts arrived in Addis Ababa on Friday and had talks with African Union officials, a spokesman said.

“The U.N. team is here to assist and reinforce the AU capacity to deploy peacekeeping troops in Darfur,” said spokesman Adam Thiam. The U.N. team – a general, a colonel and six civilians – are expected to leave for Darfur Sunday to study how best to deploy AU troops there, he added.

In Cairo, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said AU Commission chairman Alpha Oumar Konare and possibly EU envoy Jan Pronk would attend an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers on Sudan in Cairo on Sunday.

Egypt hopes the meeting will help the Sudanese government deal with the U.N. Security Council resolution and alleviate the plight of the displaced people in Darfur, he told reporters.

JANJAWEED

Some 30,000 people are estimated to have been killed and more than a million need food, medicine and shelter in the western Darfur region, where two main rebel groups launched a revolt last year, complaining of official neglect.

The government recruited the Janjaweed Arab nomads as auxiliaries against the rebels. The response turned into a rampage, with the Janjaweed setting fire to villages, killing, raping and driving people off their land.

The United Nations calls the situation in Darfur the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Hussein said the Sudanese government had armed only “popular defence forces” and not the Janjaweed irregulars.

But he added: “It is true that the situation is out of control, but we will make an effort.”

The Sudanese government has about three weeks left to show the U.N. Security Council that it is serious about disarming the Janjaweed or face possible sanctions.

The police commissioner in North Darfur state has said the disarmament process would begin this week.

With threats of possible military intervention by Western countries, Sudanese officials have indicated that Khartoum is ready to discuss any plans the AU comes up with.

Amin Hassan Omar, a member of the Khartoum delegation to Darfur negotiations, told a news conference in Beirut: “We welcome the participation of African Union forces in the ceasefire process, but without a political solution there will be no end to the problem.”

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo said after talks in Khartoum this week Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir had agreed the African Union could send 300 protection troops and if more African troops were needed he would not object.

“It should be an AU solution that is supported by the rest of the international community. We only need support … to back our own solutions,” Obasanjo told Reuters.

On Thursday, Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail told reporters in Khartoum: “Our policy is that anything that the AU wants we will cooperate (with). Before that we need to sit down, study it carefully and reach agreement on how we are going to implement it.” (Additional reporting by Roula Najem in Beirut, and Tsegaye Tadesse in Addis Ababa).