African Union delays decision on Darfur peacekeepers
LONDON/NAIROBI, Aug 10, 2004 (dpa) — The African Union (A.U.) has been forced to delay a decision to deploy a 2,000-man peacekeeping mission in the troubled western Sudanese region of Darfur, after the Sudanese government raised objections.
The delay was announced after the A.U. Peace and Security Council met late Monday in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.
“There was no decision. We are still in discussion with the Sudanese government”, A.U. spokesman Adam Thiam told Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa on Tuesday.
Before the meeting, the Sudanese government had told the A.U. it has agreed only to receive 300 A.U. troops, and would not accept 2,000. Khartoum also rejected a strengthened mandate for the A.U. force from protection to full- fledged peacekeeping.
“We need more consultations and negotiations”, said Thiam, adding the likely scenario now would be talks at the highest level, between A.U. chairperson, Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo and Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir, to try to solve the situation.
Last week, the A.U. said it had received assurances from Khartoum that it would welcome any intervention by the African Union with regard to the conflict in Darfur.
Commenting on the different messages coming from different members of the Sudanese government, A.U. spokesperson Thiam said simply: “We are monitoring the contradictions”.
Currently, there are 120 ceasefire monitors from the A.U. in Darfur. The deployment of 300 troops with a mandate to protect the monitors has so far not caused any objections from Khartoum. They are set to go to Darfur before the end of this week, said Thiam.
Also on Monday night, Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir met the chairman of the A.U. Commission, Alpha Oumar Konare, in Khartoum, and said he was confident the A.U. could help resolve the conflict in Darfur.
Bashir made no mention of peacekeepers however, but instead referred to the planned peace talks to be hosted by the A.U. in Nigeria later in August.
In London, the human rights organization Amnesty International said the Sudanese government is intimidating civilians who talk to foreigners about the situation in Darfur, demanding Sudan cease the practice.
“The Sudanese government must immediately and unconditionally release all those arrested in North, South and West Darfur detained simply for expressing their opinions about the situation in Darfur,” the London-based human rights organization said.
Scores had been arrested since the end of June 2004 in various parts of Darfur for talking to foreign government leaders, including U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier, members of the African Union Ceasefire Commission and independent journalists or for speaking out on the crisis in Darfur, it said.
Amnesty also demanded assurances that those detained were not tortured while in detention.
It said that in North Darfur at least 47 persons had reportedly been arrested between June 26 and August 3 by the security services or the Sudanese army mostly after speaking to members of foreign delegations.
The arrests included the omda (mayor) of Abu Jereda were arrested between July 15 and 17 in Abu Jereda, a village near Al Fasher, allegedly after talking to members of the AU Ceasefire Commission.
Two other people, said to be omdas in Kabkabiya, were reportedly arrested by the Janjaweed militias in Kabkabiya, Amnesty said.
In South Darfur, Abazer Ahmad Abu al-Bashir, a human rights lawyer, had been arrested by the National Security and Intelligence Agency in the town of Nyala on July 24 after submitting a petition supported by a number of leaders of ethnic groups, Amnesty said.
The European Union said after a fact-finding mission that it had seen evidence of widespread killing in Darfur, but no evidence of genocide
“It is clear there is widespread, silent and slow, killing going on, and village burning on a fairly large scale”, said Pieter Feith, envoy of the E.U. foreign policy chief Javier Solana.