AU to move forces to Darfur within days if its gets logistical help
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 23, 2004 (AP) — A top African Union official said Wednesday the 53-nation group is ready to move thousands of troops to conflict-wracked Darfur within days if it gets logistical support from Western nations and the United Nations “especially.”
The United Nations has called Sudan’s western Darfur region the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, and the Security Council has called for the African Union to vastly increase the number of troops it has there, now numbering about 300, to try to prevent attacks by Arab militias against black Africans.
Over 1.2 million people have fled their homes to escape the violence and more than 50,000 have died at the hands of the militias that the United States says are sponsored and armed by Sudan’s government. Sudan denies any involvement.
The council has threatened Sudan with possible oil sanctions if it doesn’t stop the violence.
The African Union is ready to send 4,000 to 5,000 troops “very soon _ within days, weeks,” African Union Commission Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare told The Associated Press.
But Konare said movement depends on logistical help from “Europe, America and the United Nations especially.”
So far, he said, there has been just talk about assistance.
“Sometimes people speak big, but when it is time to give big, they are not willing,” Konare said.
He said Nigeria, Rwanda and Tanzania are ready to contribute troops, “but we don’t have the means” to move and equip them.
A Security Council resolution passed Saturday strongly endorsed the deployment of a beefed-up African Union force with an expanded monitoring mission that would actively try to prevent attacks and mediate to stop the conflict from escalating.
It also authorizes Secretary-General Kofi Annan to rapidly appoint an international commission to investigate reports of human rights violations in Darfur and determine “whether or not acts of genocide have occurred.”
Annan called last week for immediate U.N. action to halt attacks against civilians in western Darfur, which he said were continuing despite the government’s promise to rein in the marauding militias.
Sudan’s government and government-allied Arab militia are accused by the United Nations, United States and others of waging a campaign of killing, torture, rape and arson to drive out Darfur’s non-Arab farmers.
The United States and some aid groups say genocide has already been committed in Darfur, a charge the government denies. The violence broke out with the emergence of two rebel groups after February 2003.
Konare was a keynote speaker at a luncheon hosted by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and the U.N. Development Program for representatives of the so-called Group of Eight major industrialized nations. The other members are Britain, France, Japan, Germany, Italy, Russia and Canada.
The speeches focused on increasing aid to the world’s poorest countries.
Powell said that President George W. Bush’s pledge to increase development assistance by 50 percent by 2006 was met three years early _ in 2003.
“And we are ready to do even more,” he said.