KHARTOUM, 27 June 2006 — Sudanese President Omar Bashir said his country could assume peacekeeping operations in war-torn Darfur, state media reported yesterday in a fresh rebuff of the UN’s deployment plan. Sudan “is prepared to undertake the peacekeeping process in Darfur if the AU abandons or relinquishes the mandate it was granted by the government,” Omdurman Radio quoted Bashir as telling a Cabinet meeting on Sunday.
Bashir’s renewed opposition to a proposed UN takeover of peacekeeping responsibilities from the cash-strapped and ill-equipped African Union came amid heightened tensions between Khartoum and the world body. The Foreign Ministry yesterday summoned the UN’s top envoy in Sudan, Jan Pronk, or his deputy, to explain under what circumstances a Darfur rebel leader was allegedly transported on a UN flight over the weekend.
The Foreign Ministry also said it had suspended all UN operations in Darfur until further notice, except those of the two largest agencies in the region — the World Food Program and the UN children’s fund UNICEF. Suleiman Jammus, a member of a dissident faction of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement, was taken Saturday from the main Darfur town of El-Fasher to South Kordofan state on a UN helicopter flight,.
“It was clear that the act was planned to take place behind the back of the Sudanese authorities,” a statement issued late Saturday said. UN offices in Khartoum did not confirm the incident and refused to comment on the government’s reaction. Jammus belongs to the wing of the SLM that opposes the fragile peace agreement signed between Minni Minawi’s SLM faction and Khartoum in Nigeria last month.
On Sunday, up to 5,000 demonstrators — mainly from the ruling National Congress Party’s student and youth organizations — protested in Khartoum against the UN peacekeeping plan, chanting anti-US and anti-UN slogans. After completing a mission aimed at mustering support from the authorities for a UN deployment, the UN’s undersecretary-general for peacekeeping operations, Jean-Marie Guehenno, reported no breakthrough.
“The response we had was not the one that we would have liked to hear,” he said last week in a briefing during which he enumerated the ideas he submitted to the government during his consultations. Bashir has repeatedly warned he will turn Darfur into “a graveyard” for Western troops, accusing the West of seeking to “recolonize Sudan.”
The UN stresses that the deployment of a strong peacekeeping contingent in Darfur is essential for the success of the May 5 peace agreement. The UN wants to replace the cash-strapped 7,000-strong African Union contingent, which has attempted in vain to maintain peace in Darfur over the past two years.
