UN wants to go to Darfur now to help African Union

By Evelyn Leopold

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United Nations should
immediately beef up the African Union force in Darfur with
communications, transport and other help in preparation for its
own operation, the head of U.N. peacekeeping said on Tuesday.

Although Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, has
rejected a U.N. force, the world body might be able to gain a
foothold in Darfur by augmenting the African Union’s
7,000-strong monitoring operation, said U.N.
Undersecretary-General Jean-Marie Guehenno.

“We believe that the United Nations can help the African
mission,” Guehenno told reporters. “We did not get any
objection from the government of Sudan so we are going to work
in earnest on that.”

“If there is an evolution in the position of (the)
government of Sudan, we will be in a much better position to
deploy a U.N. mission,” Guehenno said.

“The people of Darfur are too important to let go,” he
said, referring to the tens of thousands who have been killed
in three years of warfare and the 2.3 million people driven
into squalid camps in Darfur and neighboring Chad.

Guehenno, in briefing the Security Council on his recent
military assessment mission in Darfur, proposed building a
communications system and strengthening command and control
capabilities.

“This could mean an enhancement of the U.N. presence in the
region, through an augmented (U.N.) office in Darfur, with a
significant number of United Nations staff fully dedicated to
supporting the African mission in Sudan,” he told the council,
according to his text, obtained by Reuters.

The Darfur conflict erupted in 2003 when mostly non-Arab
tribes took up arms, accusing the Arab-dominated government of
neglect. Khartoum retaliated by arming mainly Arab militia,
known as Janjaweed, who began a campaign of murder, rape, arson
and plunder.

NEVER SAY NEVER

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan intends to speak to
Sudan’s Bashir at an African Union summit in Banjul, Gambia
this weekend and get other African leaders to tell him the AU
did not want to lead the operation beyond this year.

“So far the answer has not been positive, but the dialogue
continues,” Annan told reporters.

But he said that “in politics, words like ‘never’ and
‘forever’ do not exist,” Annan said. “We have seen leaders say
lots of things, but they also find reasons and ways to adapt,
to shift, to change direction, and often forget that they have
used the word ‘never.”‘

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said “the sooner the U.N. takes
control of the mission in Darfur, the better.”

But he said it was the responsibility of African Union to
bring “Sudan’s leaders into compliance with their own
commitment under the Darfur peace agreement.”

The United Nations already has 10,000 peacekeepers in
southern Sudan to monitor a major peace agreement that ended
decades of civil war. But a force in Darfur would need a
tougher mandate and more mobility.