The United Nations Security Council has arrived in Sudan with assurances that the UN has no intention of taking over the country and sees the government as a partner in promoting peace.
The government has been very reluctant to allow a UN peacekeeping force to take over from the 7 000-strong African Union force now in conflict-wracked Darfur, and fears of UN intervention were fueled last month when a council resolution to spur planning for a handover was adopted under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which allows military action.
Britain’s UN Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry, who is leading the council mission, said shortly after the delegation arrived at a Khartoum hotel late on Monday that he recognised some Sudanese ”took amiss” the last council resolution, which they had hoped would pay tribute to the government for signing a peace agreement with the
largest rebel faction in Darfur.
The United Nations has become increasingly involved in Sudan since November 2003 — following the eruption of the Darfur conflict — and is running a massive humanitarian operation in the vast western region as well as a 10 000-strong UN peacekeeping operation to monitor the January 2005 peace agreement that ended a 21-year civil war between the government and southern rebels.
At least 180 000 people have been killed and more than two-million displaced in Darfur since rebel groups made up of ethnic Africans rose up against the Arab-led Khartoum government in early 2003. The government is accused of responding by unleashing Arab militias known as the Janjaweed who have been accused of some of the worst atrocities — but it denies any involvement.
Jones Parry said the UN is involved in Sudan ”because of the responsibility of the international community to alleviate hardship, to avoid the atrocities and so on”.
”We’re doing it in support of the people of Sudan. We’re not doing it for any takeover. We’re doing it with the government of Sudan all the time, and we’re not seeking in any way to usurp the powers of the government of Sudan,” he said.
But many Sudanese feel otherwise, in varying degrees.
An editorial in Monday in the independent opposition paper Rae al-Shaab, called the Security Council mission ”a visit by an unwelcome guest”. An editorial in al-Intibaha, a hardline daily supporting Sudan’s Muslim-dominated north, was entitled ”No Welcome for UN Security Council.”
”The visit of the council is meant to be a full international siege, a load on the chest of the Sudanese people and a continuation of the pressure to dispatch yet more foreign troops to Darfur, nothing else, nothing more,” Rae al-Shaab said, calling the council ”a tool used by some superpowers to serve their own ends”.
Al-Intibaha condemned the council’s plans to discuss the Darfur Peace Agreement — which two key rebel groups have refused to sign — saying that if the government can’t defend ”our faith and people” then it should be replaced.
Mustafa Osman Ismail, the ruling National Congress Party’s political relations chief and a presidential adviser on foreign affairs, was quoted in Sudan’s independent newspaper, Akhbar al-Youm, as saying the party will welcome the Security Council, but the country will make its views heard.
The council is expected to hear those views on Tuesday during daylong meetings with government leaders and officials, opposition parties and relief and humanitarian organisations.
While the council is focused primarily on Darfur, Jones Parry said it has a broader agenda as well. The council wants to endorse the government’s actions in signing
the north-south peace agreement and last month’s Darfur peace deal.
”We’ve come to urge implementation of what the government has said it will do –better, quicker, implementation,” he said.
The council also wants to assure the government of its ”full respect for the territorial integrity of Sudan as a country”, he said. ”We see the government of Sudan as a partner in what is now unfolding … and the government of Sudan has an opportunity to move things in the right direction because of the actions it’s taken.”
Jones Parry said the Security Council will be trying to get the Sudanese government’s agreement for a UN peacekeeping mission in Darfur to take over from the African Union late this year or early next year — and to beef up the AU force in the interim so it can more effectively monitor the Darfur peace agreement.
”If we can do anything now to further that up, so much the better,” he said. – Sapa-AP