Sudan undecided on UN troops in Darfur
By Opheera McDoom

May 26, 2006 -(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 Oct. 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 authorising violence against civilians.

With refugees fleeing into neighbouring 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".

From: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L26363251.htm