KHARTOUM, 10 June 2006 — A rare high-level joint UN and African Union team arrived in Sudan yesterday hoping to convince Khartoum to accept UN peacekeeping troops in Darfur and plan for their deployment.
Political team members were due to hold talks with the government today while military, telecommunications and other technical experts would head to Darfur, in western Sudan, to plan for a possible deployment of UN troops.
“We are here to work together to see how well we can help the people in Darfur live together in harmony,” AU Peace and Security Commissioner Said Djinnit said.
Sudan has so far opposed the deployment of UN troops in Darfur to take over from 7,000 poorly equipped and underfunded African Union troops who are monitoring a shaky truce in Darfur. It had initially refused entry to the team. President Omar Hassan Bashir reluctantly agreed to allow them to begin work only after days of intensive talks with UN troubleshooter Lakhdar Brahimi and other senior UN officials last month.
The team will be in Sudan for 18 days and includes the head of UN peacekeeping, Jean-Marie Geuhenno. UN officials said it was unprecedented for someone so senior to head a technical assessment mission.
The team will also assess how to beef up the AU mission to deal with the implementation of a May 5 peace deal. The AU is likely to send another 3,000 troops to the region.
Sudan has resisted international pressure to let UN peacekeepers take over from the AU troops in Darfur, likening it to a Western invasion that would attract jihadi militants and cause an Iraq-style quagmire.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said the United Nations can be deployed within four months, though it took more than a year for 10,000 soldiers to set up in Sudan’s south to monitor a separate peace deal there.
The May 5 peace deal, signed by only one of three rebel groups has failed to ease the tension in Darfur. Thousands of Darfuris have demonstrated almost daily against the deal, and attacked the AU, hindering the mission’s already limited ability to protect them. On Thursday, the AU said four members of the rebel negotiating teams who refused to sign the deal in May, had endorsed the agreement in AU headquarters in Addis Ababa.
The most senior was Abdel Rahman Musa Abakr, chief negotiator of one of the three rebel factions. The four signed the deal as individuals, officials said. Local leaders from Darfur have threatened that UN peacekeepers may face violence if they enter the region as part of a peacekeeping force. “The people here are Muslims and they don’t want international intervention here because it complicates the local traditions,” local council member Ali Tango told reporters.
“The people don’t want foreigners to come in here,” Tango SAID. “Look at how Afghanistan and Iraq deteriorated.” The AU cannot adequately protect civilians due to funding problems and a weak mandate. “The Security Council will do everything possible to insure that a United Nations mission with the consent of the government of Sudan comes to Darfur as soon as possible,” head of the delegation Emyr Parry-Jones told reporters following his meeting with Gov. Yousef Osman Kibir.
