UN fears fresh fighting in Darfur after rains end

By Irwin Arieff

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 21 (Reuters) – U.N. officials worried on Thursday an end to the rainy season could lead to fresh fighting in Sudan’s Darfur region and urged governments to do more to help speed African Union troops to the troubled area.

“Every effort has to be made to ensure that the rebels and others do not use the end of the rainy season to step up fighting,” U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland said.

While there had been progress in getting food, water and sanitation to Darfur’s 2 million people in need, the security situation was deteriorating for aid workers and local inhabitants in what the United Nations sees as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, Egeland told reporters.

“I told the Security Council that security is long overdue … and that every effort now has to be made to bring in the African Union observers and troops,” he said.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan also stressed the need for a quick deployment of more than 3,000 additional AU troops, approved by the AU’s Peace and Security Council on Wednesday. The soldiers are to join 150 cease-fire monitors and 300 AU troops already on the ground. The AU is an organization of African states.

“The planned deployment requires complex and massive planning and logistical support. The secretary-general considers it essential that the African Union receive the urgent, adequate and continuing support of the international community, not only to quickly deploy but also to sustain effectively its mission,” an Annan spokesman said.

After years of skirmishes between Arab nomads and non-Arab farmers over scarce resources in arid Darfur, rebels took up arms early last year.

Rebels accuse the government of using Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, to loot and burn non-Arab villages. The Sudanese government admits arming some militias to fight the rebels, but denies any links to the Janjaweed, calling them outlaws.

The United States this week pledged two military transports to help an expanded African peacekeeping force deploy in Darfur, and Canada said on Thursday it would fund five chartered helicopters to move along the mission.

“We are alone. We have 780 international and 5,500 local aid workers and we feel very alone in Darfur at the moment,” Egeland said. “We need to have the African Union presence and they need to be funded by the donors to be able to deploy.”

While there had been “promising signals” from North America, several European countries and Australia, “I’m frustrated. It is too slow,” Egeland said.