Germany waiting for UN on Sudan mission

BERLIN, Feb 14 (AFP) — Germany is ready to take part in an international mission in Sudan but it wants the UN Security Council to define a peacekeeping mandate first, a government spokesman said on Monday.

“Germany is fundamentally ready to participate on this basis,” the spokesman, Thomas Steg, said at a routine government media conference.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has urged the Security Council to “assume its responsibility” for peace and security in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region, and at the weekend appealed to the European Union and NATO to become involved.

Annan has asked for a peacekeeping operation, involving more than 10,000 personnel, to be launched.

Ethnic rebels rose up in Darfur, a vast western area the size of France, in February 2003. The rebellion was put down by the Arab-led government with the help of Arab militias known as Janjaweed.

Some 70,000 people there have died since, many from famine and disease.

Germany’s most widely-read newspaper, Bild, has quoted a defence ministry report as saying that Berlin is ready to provide personnel to act as observers in Sudan and to help run any military headquarters.

Bild said that the UN is mainly seeking civilian police officers.

Germany’s Bundestag lower house of parliament approved on December 3 a government plan to make some 200 soldiers available to the African Union to help resolve the crisis in Darfur.