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Sudan hails deal on mixed U.N. and African force in Darfur as a diplomatic victory

Sudan hails deal on mixed U.N. and African force in Darfur as a diplomatic victory

By Alfred De Montesquiou

November 20, 2006

Khartoum, Sudan – President Omar al-Bashir’s government on Monday hailed a new agreement with the United Nations over peacekeepers in Darfur as a diplomatic breakthrough for Sudan, but said serious differences remain over the force’s makeup and command.

It was the first official word by Khartoum of its acceptance of the deal, announced Thursday in Addis Ababa. But there were signs the government might still resist hopes for a robust U.N. deployment to bring an end to the continuing bloodshed.

U.N. chief Kofi Annan said the deal calls for a mixed U.N.-African Union force of up to 20,000 troops. If so, that would mean a dramatic reversal of Khartoum’s staunch resistance to deploying any U.N. troops in Darfur

But the Sudanese cabinet statement on Monday spoke only of U.N. “assistance” to the African force and depicted the agreement as a defeat for a Security Council resolution that called for a peacekeeping force fully under U.N. control.

The cabinet, which gathered Sunday, “backed the outcome of the (Sudanese) government meetings … concerning the provision of a package of assistance from the U.N. to the African Union,” the official SUNA news agency said.

SUNA said al-Bashir and his government “showed happiness over what it sees as a diplomatic victory” over advocates of the Security Council resolution on Darfur.

The agency said the president and his ministers still differ with the U.N. on whether the force commander should be from the African Union, or simply from the African continent. The cabinet also has objections to the overall size of the force, SUNA said.

But the government decided these issues are “a technical matter that could be resolved, and not a political one,” the news agency said.

The comments could signal that Sudan will try to reduce the U.N. role in the peacekeeping force. But they could also be part of an effort by the government to save face, after abandoning its earlier position that U.N. troops were unacceptable.

Al-Bashir is scheduled to visit Libya Tuesday for a meeting on Darfur hosted by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. Delegations are expected from Sudan, Chad and Egypt.

Gadhafi on Sunday denounced any deployment of U.N. troops in Sudan as “colonialism,” and said the Sudanese army could do a better job than peacekeepers at stopping the violence in Darfur.

“The presence of international forces in Darfur would be a new return to colonialism,” he said. “… Since when were the colonialist powers concerned about us? In the past, they treated us like animals and took us as slaves in their ships.”

The African Union force of 7,000 currently in the Darfur region has not been able to stop the bloodshed. More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million driven from their homes in years of fighting.

When the deal was announced last week, the U.N. and AU said that all parties, including Sudan, had agreed in principle on a mixed force.

Under the agreement, the joint U.N.-AU statement said, troops for the force would be drawn from African countries to the extent that was possible. But, the statement added, “backstopping and command and control structures will be provided by the UN.”

Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol later insisted Khartoum had never agreed to a “mixed force” but instead to one in which AU soldiers and command would merely receive support from the U.N.

Samani al-Wasila, a Sudanese state minister for foreign affairs, repeated Monday in Cairo that the agreement “does not give the right to the international troops to intervene in the region.”

Sudanese hard-liners have fiercely opposed any U.N. presence in Darfur, and at one point al-Bashir said he would personally lead armed resistance to U.N. peacekeepers.

This stance appeared to soften in recent days.

In the official army newspaper Al-Quwat Al-Musalaha, Ibrahim Ahmed Omar, the spokesman for al-Bashir’s National Congress Party, suggested indirectly that the party had accepted that the U.N. will at least partly direct the peacekeeping force in Darfur.

“We will not accept that the U.N. have the full command of the African Union force in Darfur,” he was quoted as saying.

But some U.N. officials worry Khartoum was only buying time to let its army and militia conduct mount more attacks in the region.

Another official, U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland said Sunday that army support for the janjaweed milita has only increased and that the forces are still killing civilians daily. The Sudanese government denied the claim.

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Associated Press Writer Mohamed Osman in Khartoum and Salah Nasrawi in Cairo contributed to this report.