WASHINGTON, 27 February 2005 — The United States on Friday renewed its “grave concerns” over violence in Sudan’s Darfur region and said flatly it would not fully normalize ties with Khartoum until the conflict was resolved. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the situation in Darfur, where some 70,000 people have died and 1.6 million have been displaced in the last two years, remained a “major priority” for Washington.
“We take this opportunity to underscore our grave concerns about the violence and atrocities in Darfur,” Boucher said, referring to the conflict pitting government forces and their militia allies against rebels. “The United States will not fully normalize relations with Sudan until the situation in Darfur has stabilized.”
The United States continues to label the violence in Darfur as genocide and on Monday proposed new targeted UN sanctions for Sudan in what it called a bid to get both the government and rebels to end the bloodshed. Boucher said the USwas taking a number of diplomatic actions to bolster its presence in the Sudan and support the comprehensive peace agreement recently achieved.
Washington has named a new charge d’affaires in Khartoum, David Kaeuper, and the embassy has sent an official to southern Sudan to establish a diplomatic presence there, he said. The UN undersecretary-general for peacekeeping operations said Friday the world body is preparing to dispatch 10,000 peacekeepers to Sudan to monitor an accord reached to end the civil war in the African nation.
“We are gearing up to deploy 10,000 troops in Sudan to support the North-South process,” Jean-Marie Guehenno told reporters as he prepared for talks in Washington at the Pentagon and State Department.
Guehenno said “a breakthrough has been achieved, but it is a fragile process,” and added that “there is potential for spoilers in the south.” The United Nations has said it plans to deploy troops within six months, during which time the government and rebels have committed under a Jan. 9 peace deal to set up a national power-sharing administration with an autonomous south.
A contingent of 284 South African troops will depart for Sudan’s troubled Darfur region next week on a peacekeeping mission, South African Defense Minister Mosiuoa Lekota said on Friday. “This would indeed be a very difficult mission of the African Union, but the preparation has been very thorough,” the minister told soldiers at a military base near the South African city of Bloemfontein.
The contingent, which will include women, will fly to Sudan tomorrow, Lekota was quoted by the SAPA news agency as saying, adding that this will be the first full contingent South Africa is deploying to Darfur. He said the group would join 39 observers who had been in Darfur since July 2004.
