African Union asks for NATO’s help in Darfur

BRUSSELS, April 27 (AFP) — The African Union (AU) has asked to start talks with NATO for logistical support in its mission in Sudan’s war-torn western Darfur region.

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

The request was made in a letter sent to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer by AU Commission Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare, NATO spokesman James Appathurai said Wednesday.

After receiving the message at NATO’s headquarters on Wednesday morning, de Hoop Scheffer quickly informed the permanent representatives of NATO’s members who then “agreed that exploratory talks should begin with the AU”, Appathurai said.

The request comes ahead of a scheduled meeting on Thursday of senior AU diplomats in Addis Ababa to mull a significant expansion of the pan-African body’s operation in Sudan’s troubled western region of Darfur.

The AU’s Peace and Security Council will meet on Thursday to discuss the possible expansion of the current mission, perhaps by more than 100 percent, an official at the pan-African body’s headquarters in the Ethiopian capital said.

Thursday’s meeting has been called “to discuss reinforcing the African Union mission to Sudan,” Said Djinnit told AFP, adding that the existing mission might be more than doubled.

“The council is going to determine the scale of this reinforcement,” he said. “There is talk of more than doubling the mission.”

The AU now has about 2,200 troops in Darfur protecting AU observers monitoring a shaky ceasefire between Khartoum, its proxy militia and two rebel groups who have been fighting the government for two years.

It already plans to boost the current size of its Darfur mission to 3,320 by the end of May but many have said the expansion should be larger.

Last month, UN humanitarian affairs chief Jan Egeland said there was an urgent need for the expansion to prevent the number of displaced Darfur residents from rising to three or four million from the current two million.

By some estimates, the conflict in Darfur has cost 300,000 lives since early 2003.