UN envoy calls for urgent European help for African mission in Darfur
By PAUL AMES, Associated Press Writer
BRUSSELS, Sep 29,2004 (AP) — The United Nations’ special envoy for Sudan appealed Wednesday for European financial and logistical help in urgently deploying thousands of African peacekeepers to Darfur.
Warning that violence in Darfur could spread instability across the continent, Jan Pronk said preparations to send a beefed-up African monitoring force had to be accelerated to get troops to the region in the coming weeks.
“The present tendency is slow progress, a small force and a narrow mandate. That has to be changed into a quick process, broad mandate and a bigger force,” said Pronk, who is due to report to the U.N. Security Council next week.
The African Union last week agreed to move thousands of troops to Darfur, provided Western nations and the United Nations give logistical support.
The Security Council has called for the 53-nation African Union to vastly increase the number of its troops there, now about 300, to try to prevent attacks by nomadic militias against black African farmers. Pronk said the stronger force should start deploying in October.
“We need a big force, not just some soldiers … it’s a huge country,” Pronk told reporters after talks at European Union headquarters. “I need thousands of feet … present in all places where there is insecurity.”
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said he may travel soon to the African Union’s headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for talks on how the EU can assist. A small delegation of EU officials is already in the Ethiopian capital to help preparations.
“We are waiting for the demands of the African Union,” Solana said. “On the ground, the soldiers will be Africans … the only thing (we) can do is to help with logistics and with communications.”
About 1.2 million people in Darfur _ a region about the size of France _ have fled their villages because of attacks blamed on government-backed militias, known as the Janjaweed. More than 200,000 refugees have crossed to neighboring Chad.
Sudan, under threat of U.N. sanctions, insists it is now doing all it can to calm the situation, and says it is ready to welcome home uprooted non-Arab African villagers.
Pronk said assistance from the EU and NATO could include planning, planes, fuel, vehicles and other logistical and financial support.
“That requires money of course, a huge investment,” he said. NATO is also studying a request from the United Nations to help provide logistics back up to the African Union.
EU officials declined to estimate how much money the 25-nation bloc would provide to support the Darfur mission. The European bloc is already covering 60 percent of the costs of the current AU monitoring mission as part of a A?285 million (US$340 million) aid commitment to Darfur.
In a statement, the EU’s head office said it “would be favorable to providing additional funding for an extended mission.”
Pronk said failure to halt the violence in Darfur could lead to the crisis spreading across Africa from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean by exacerbating tribal, religious and racial tensions.
He warned Europe would not be immune to such instability which could provoke new waves of migration and allow terrorists to build footholds in the region. “It may also be used by fundamentalist radicalists in other countries as a playground for future destabilization,” he cautioned.
Aside from backing the mission in the western region of Darfur, Pronk urged Europeans to support efforts to resolve the 21-year civil war with rebels from the south.