African Union discusses peacekeeping force for Darfur
ADDIS ABABA, Aug 9 (AFP) — The Peace and Security Council of the African Union (AU) was discussing the deployment of an African peacekeeping force in Sudan’s western Darfur region, AU diplomats said.
Council members were weighing whether to transform a 300-strong protection force, which is yet to be deployed in Darfur, into a peacekeeping force, AU’s director for peace and security department Sam Ibok told AFP.
The AU protection force, when deployed, will be charged with protecting about 120 AU observers currently operating in the region which has been a theatre of 17 months of conflict between two rebel groups and Sudan’s troops, backed by a militia called Janjaweed.
“As for the peacekeeking force, the council is discussing it and once they inform us formally, we will respond to it,” Sudan’s ambassador to Ethiopia and the AU, Osman Al-Sayyed, told AFP in Addis Ababa.
Al-Sayyed, who procedurally walked out of the meeting because Sudan was the topic of discussion, said the embattled African nation had also given up the chairmanship of the meeting for Algeria.
Sudan is supposed to chair the AU peace and security council this month.
The AU’s commission’s chairman Alpha Oumar Konare briefed the council about the Arab League meeting in Cairo over the weekend, where Arab nations asked the UN to give Sudan more time to meet requirements of a resolution it passed on July 30.
The resolution demanded that the Khartoum government rein in the Janjaweed militia, blamed for terrifying brutality in Darfur, in 30 days, or face international “measures”.
The AU announced last Wednesday its plans to transform the protection force into a peacekeeping one with broader mandate of ensuring that peace prevails in the resource-rich Darfur.
“We have not officially informed the Sudanese government of this plan, but we shall inform it, depending on the council’s decision today,” Ibok told AFP earlier in the day.
Ibok said the government in Khartoum was “not opposed to an African force,” and Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail had said that the government “will look into it when they officially receive communication from the AU.”
But he recalled that Khartoum was against the idea of sending troops to Sudan from the United States or other western countries.
The UN estimates that as many as 50,000 people have been killed since Sudan’s army forces and the Janjaweed cracked down on a rebellion by minority tribes which erupted in Darfur in February 2003.
Another 1.2 million people have fled their homes in Sudan and up to 200,000 more have been settled in makeshift camps in eastern Chad, the UN says.