UN Security Council still working on Sudan peace mission

UNITED NATIONS, March 11 (AFP) — The Security Council voted to extend the UN mission in Sudan for one week as the council tries to work out agreement on a peacekeeping operation and how to stop the bloodshed in Darfur.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has asked the council to authorise a 10,000-strong peace force to help stabilise Africa’s largest nation after the government and rebels ended a 21-year civil war in January.

But the 15-nation council has been at odds for weeks over questions relating to the separate conflict in Sudan’s troubled western Darfur region, where an independent commission found crimes against humanity were likely committed.

The United States has been unable to drum up wide support for targeted sanctions against those responsible for those crimes — or for its opposition to referring the matter to the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague.

“I think that the council is united in its belief that the peacekeeping operation needs to be deployed immediately, and that we can’t wait any longer,” US envoy Stuart Holliday said after a council meeting on Thursday afternoon.

He acknowledged there was no consensus on the US proposals but said he expected the council to vote next week.

The UN’s emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, on Wednesday said that the death toll in Darfur was perhaps three to five times higher than the estimate of 70,000 dead that emerged late last year.

After rebels in Darfur rose up against Sudan’s Arab-led government, Khartoum turned to proxy militias to help put down the rebellion — and those militias have been blamed for a scorched-earth campaign of murder, rape and pillaging.

Peace talks between the government and the Darfur rebels are at a standstill.

Chinese ambassador Wang Guangya on Wednesday indicated that China — like Russia — was in general opposed to sanctions, and both China and Algeria back Sudan’s call to let its own courts try the perpetrators.

Meanwhile the United States, which does not recognise the ICC, has called for a special tribunal to be set up in Tanzania — but that proposal has been largely rejected by other council members.

“This is an issue that’s still under discussion,” Holliday said, adding: “We’ve narrowed our differences — I think considerably.”

There is agreement on the need to quickly get a peacekeeping force into Sudan amid fears that the north-south peace agreement could otherwise unravel if the international community does not act quickly.