UN’s Sudan envoy renews calls for more peacekeepers in Darfur

KHARTOUM, Sudan, Mar 23, 2005 (AP) — The United Nations has condemned the wounding of a U.S. aid official in Darfur and said it underlined the need for more peacekeepers in the western region of Sudan.

A Rwandan soldier belonging to the AU Force patrols a section of the Abu Shouk camp for displaced people on the outskirts of El-Fasher, Sudan. (AFP) .

U.N. spokeswoman Radhia Achouri on Wednesday quoted her boss, Jan Pronk, as deploring the shooting of the U.S. disaster assistance official as she was riding in a four-vehicle convoy on Tuesday.

The woman, whose name has been withheld, suffered facial wounds. She was one of 20 members of a disaster assistance team in Sudan operated by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The U.S. State Department has asked for an investigation by the Sudanese government and by African Union peacekeepers.

Pronk, the U.N. secretary-general’s special envoy to Sudan, “believes that these incidents are not likely to stop unless a very robust protection force of at least 8,000 troops is deployed in Darfur to protect the civilian population and the humanitarian workers,” Achouri said in a statement.

Pronk had called for 8,000 troops earlier this month.

The AU currently has some 3,000 soldiers and cease-fire monitors in Darfur, and AU officials said Monday they had started drafting plans to double that number in response to U.N. calls.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said it is possible that U.N. peacekeepers could complement the AU troops.

Darfur has been plagued for more than two years by an ethnic conflict that has claimed the lives of tens of thousands and uprooted more than 2 million people.