BRUSSELS, 28 April 2005 — The African Union has asked to start talks with NATO for logistical support in its mission in Sudan’s war-torn western Darfur region, an official at the military alliance said yesterday.
The request was made in a letter sent to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer by AU Commission Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare, said NATO spokesman James Appathurai.
After receiving the message at NATO’s headquarters yesterday morning, de Hoop Scheffer quickly informed the permanent representatives of NATO’s members who then “agreed that exploratory talks should begin with the AU”, Appathurai said.
The request comes ahead of a scheduled meeting today of senior AU diplomats in Addis Ababa to mull a significant expansion of the pan-African body’s operation in Sudan’s troubled western region of Darfur.
The AU’s Peace and Security Council will meet today to discuss the possible expansion of the current mission, perhaps by more than 100 percent, an official at the pan-African body’s headquarters in the Ethiopian capital said. Today’s meeting has been called “to discuss reinforcing the African Union mission to Sudan,” Said Djinnit told AFP, adding that the existing mission might be more than doubled.
“The council is going to determine the scale of this reinforcement,” he said. “There is talk of more than doubling the mission.” The AU now has about 2,200 troops in Darfur protecting AU observers monitoring a shaky ceasefire between Khartoum, its proxy militia and two rebel groups who have been fighting the government for two years.
It already plans to boost the current size of its Darfur mission to 3,320 by the end of May but many have said the expansion should be larger.
Last month, UN humanitarian affairs chief Jan Egeland said there was an urgent need for the expansion to prevent the number of displaced Darfur residents from rising to three or four million from the current two million. By some estimates, the conflict in Darfur has cost 300,000 lives since early 2003.
An African Union force in Darfur will be given a stronger mandate to protect civilians who face attack in the troubled western Sudanese region, a senior AU official said.
“The AU mission there will no longer turn its eyes in the event that the civilian population comes under threat,” Sam Ibok, the special representative for AU-sponsored Darfur peace talks, said in an interview late on Tuesday. “That is why we are having a more robust deployment.”
The force currently has orders to monitor a shaky cease-fire signed just more than a year ago, with only limited powers to protect civilians. That would change. “It means that they will be more proactive in their engagement of these parties (armed groups), not reactive, they will be proactive,” he said.
The AU would increase patrols and focus on areas of potential conflict and where civilians have suffered.
