US to Sudan : ‘Accept UN peace force or face sanctions’

UNITED STATES: Sudan will have to accept non-African troops in a U.N.-authorized peacekeeping force for Darfur or face the prospect of new United Nations sanctions, a senior U.S. official said.

Although efforts will be made to ensure that Africa contributes a large percentage of the 26,000-strong mission, the continent does not have enough trained soldiers to fully staff the force and Sudan will be penalized unless it drops objections to non-African participation, Andrew Natsios, the U.S. special envoy for Sudan, said Tuesday.

U.S. President George W. Bush has made ending the Darfur conflict a U.S. foreign policy priority but the United States is reluctant to provide troops itself for the force, given military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, Washington is likely to contribute logistics and transportation to the mission.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in June ordered U.S. ambassadors to ask their host countries to contribute to the hybrid force, Natsios said.

“We are going to try ... to recruit from Africa, but it’s very clear from already talking to African leaders and African militaries that there are not enough African troops who are trained for peacekeeping operations to make up this force,” he told reporters in a conference call. “We are going to have to go outside of Africa.”

The Sudanese government is adamantly opposed to non-Africans playing any major role in the hybrid U.N.-African Union operation that was authorized by the U.N. Security Council on July 31 and will be made up of 20,000 peacekeepers and 6,000 civilian police.

Disagreements over the composition of the mission were a major reason the authorization was delayed for months despite mounting pressure on Khartoum to accept it to help end nearly four years of internal conflict in which more than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been displaced.

Natsios, however, said that in finally agreeing to the mission, Khartoum had opened the door to non-African participation, although he stressed that in accordance with Sudan’s demands command of the force had been given to a senior Nigerian general.

“We expect the Sudanese government to implement what they have agreed to, which is if we can’t get sufficient trained troops, we will go outside of Africa, which I have to say I expect will happen,” he said, warning of consequences if Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s government balks.

“If there is an attempt to renegotiate what was negotiated already with the Sudanese government, then we will introduce a sanctions resolution before the U.N,” Natsios said.

Meanwhile the United Nations said it has received pledges of troops and police for a predominantly African peacekeeping force to help end the four-year conflict in Darfur that has claimed over 200,000 lives, which would meet a key Sudanese demand.

The U.N. Peacekeeping Department and the new Department of Field Support issued a preliminary list of countries that have offered military and police personnel for the 26,000-strong joint African Union-United Nations force. It includes a large number of countries from Africa, several from Asia, one from the Middle East and none from the West.

“We are hitting the target of a predominantly African force, and we’re very pleased about that,” Assistant Secretary-General Jane Holl Lute, acting head of the Department of Field Support, said Tuesday. The U.N. Security Council authorized the “hybrid” force a week ago after months of delay in getting agreement from the Sudanese government. It is the first joint peacekeeping operation by the African Union and the United Nations and will replace the beleaguered 7,000-strong AU force now in Darfur no later than Dec. 31.

The list of potential troop contributors includes Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Egypt, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Bangladesh, Jordan, Malaysia, Nepal and Thailand. The list of countries offering at least 50 police officers includes Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Egypt, Indonesia, Nepal, Nigeria and Pakistan.

Washington, New York, Wednesday, AP