Sudan southern rebels offer to deploy peacekeepers in Darfur

CAIRO, Feb 11 (AFP) — Southern rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement are ready to deploy as peacekeepers in Darfur alongside government troops and an African Union stabilisation force, their leader said in an interview published Friday.

Leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) John Garang (L) inspects a guard of honour in Rumbek, on Saturday January 22, 2005. (AFP).

“I proposed forming a three-pronged force for Darfur made up of government troops, the SPLM and the African Union with each element contributing 10,000 men,” Garang told the Saudi-owned daily Asharq al-Awsat.

“The numbers are not important — the vital thing is that each side contribute a third of the force and provide the necessary logistics back-up.”

The African Union already has a small observer force of some 1,700 troops inside Darfur but, in a region the size of France, it has struggled to monitor a ceasefire that has been repeatedly violated since it was signed in April last year.

On Wednesday, the leader of the Sudan Liberation Movement, one of two ethnic minority rebel groups in Darfur, hit out at the African Union force, charging that it had failed the region’s population.

“They have failed to be observers. Their presence has had no effect on the ground,” Abdul Wahid Mohammed Ahmed al-Nur told AFP from his base in neighbouring Eritrea, complaining that the monitors often arrived “four or five days after an incident”.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan earlier this month proposed expanding the force to more than 10,000 troops and widening its mandate.

But Security Council discussions have been muddied by a dispute over jurisdiction in the serious abuses alleged against government security forces and allied Arab militias in Darfur.

Human rights groups argue that the International Criminal Court should hear any cases while the Sudanese government insists it will not accept overseas trials for its nationals.

Tens of thousands of people have died and more than 1.5 million been driven from their homes since the rebel uprising began in early 2003, prompting a scorched earth policy by the Arab-dominated regime in Khartoum.

A UN inquiry last month found Khartoum guilty of gross, systematic human rights violations but stopped short of endorsing US-led accusations of genocide.

The SPLM signed a January 9 peace agreement with the government ending two decades of civil war between the Muslim north and the mainly Christian or animist south — Africa’s longest-running conflict.

The southern rebels once championed the cause of all Sudan’s marginalised minorities and backed a previous rebellion in Darfur in the late 1980s. But, despite accusations from Khartoum, they insist they have played no part in the current uprising.