Sudan undecided on UN troops in Darfur

By Opheera McDoom

KHARTOUM (Reuters) – Sudan has yet to decide whether to
allow U.N. peacekeeping troops into Darfur, but will let a
technical team visit the region to investigate a United Nations
role, presidential advisor Mustafa Osman Ismail said on Friday.

“The (U.N.) role has not been decided yet,” he told
reporters. “Will it be a humanitarian role, one of monitoring
the ceasefire, a role of peacekeeping?”

He said the decision would be taken after a joint African
Union-United Nations assessment team had been to Darfur and
held talks with the government in Khartoum.

Sudan is under international pressure to allow U.N. forces
to take over from 7,000 under-funded and poorly equipped AU
troops monitoring a shaky ceasefire in Darfur.

The U.N. Security Council has already called for the
deployment of U.N. troops to help end a conflict which has
killed tens of thousands and forced 2 million from their homes.

International rights groups appealed to the United Nations
on Friday to put “rhetoric into action” by deploying a robust
peacekeeping force in Darfur by October 1.

“Darfur’s most urgent need is for a significantly stronger
international force to be deployed without delay,” Amnesty
International, Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis
Group think tank said in a joint letter to the Security
Council.

Khartoum had initially rejected the deployment of U.N.
peacekeeping troops in Darfur, saying it would cause an
Iraq-like quagmire which would attract jihadi militants.

But it began to soften its stance after signing a peace
deal on May 5 with the main Darfur rebel faction.

After talks in Khartoum this week, top U.N. troubleshooter
Lakhdar Brahimi and senior peacekeeping official Hedi Annabi
convinced Sudan to let a U.N.-AU technical team begin work.

Brahimi said the team would arrive within days. Ismail said
that no date had been fixed.

SPREADING INTO CHAD

The Darfur conflict began in 2003 when rebels in Darfur, an
arid region the size of France in western Sudan, took up arms,
complaining of neglect by the government in Khartoum.

The rebellion unleashed a wave of revenge killings, rape
and looting by pro-Khartoum “Janjaweed” militia. The government
said it armed some Arab militia but denies authorizing violence
against civilians.

With refugees fleeing into neighboring Chad, the conflict
is now spreading there, raising pressure for an early
deployment of U.N. troops to stem any further instability in
the region.

A Human Rights Watch report released on Thursday said 118
eastern Chadian villagers were shot and hacked to death by the
Janjaweed and local Chadian recruits in a mid-April massacre.

“The arrival of the (U.N.) blue helmets in Darfur is
essential,” Ana Liria-Franch, representative in Chad of the
U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, told Reuters.

She said talks were under way with the European Union about
the need for a smaller separate force in eastern Chad to
protect camps sheltering Darfur refugees. “We’re considering a
European force, about 450-strong,” she said.

Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and Crisis Group praised a
recent Security Council resolution affirming the world’s
responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war
crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

But they said Security Council members must immediately
secure the Sudanese government’s consent to a U.N. force in
Darfur or impose sanctions on high-level Sudanese officials.

They called Sudan “largely responsible for the catastrophe
that has become Darfur and now threatens Chad.”

(Additional reporting by Pascal Fletcher in Dakar)