A United Nations Security Council team met on Wednesday with African Union officials to discuss the possible handover to the UN of an AU peacekeeping force in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region.
A day after failing to win express Sudanese government approval for the transfer during talks in Khartoum, the UN mission arrived at AU headquarters in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, to pursue further talks on the matter.
Diplomats said the 15-member delegation would meet AU Commission chief Alpha Oumar Konare, members of the pan-African body’s Peace and Security Council and officials from countries that have contributed troops to the Darfur mission.
“It is a formal meeting with the AU to congratulate it on efforts to stabilise Darfur and reiterate that the AU continues to play a central role, even if it transfers the force to the UN,” one diplomat told Agence France-Press.
On Tuesday, the Security Council team held talks in Khartoum over the deployment of UN troops to Darfur, where three years of civil war have claimed up to 300 000 lives and displaced about 2,4-million others.
But the Sudanese government, which has thus far refused to endorse the transfer of the cash-strapped African Union Mission in Sudan (Amis) to the UN, offered only a lukewarm response, officials said.
Khartoum said only that it would give the proposed handover “step-by-step” consideration, despite repeated AU requests for a rapid transition given its inability to sustain the 7 000-strong Amis force in Darfur.
In Khartoum, the leader of the Security Council delegation, Britain’s UN ambassador Emyr Jones-Parry, repeated assurances that the move would not be made without the approval of the Sudanese government.
Still, UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Marie Guehenno was expected in Addis Ababa later on Wednesday to help set up a joint UN-AU preparatory mission that would evaluate requirements for the switch if Sudan eventually agrees.
The Security Council delegation visit comes at a crucial time for Darfur, following the May 5 peace deal concluded in Abuja that only one of three rebel factions has signed.
The team is currently on a nine-day tour of African hotspots and after Ethiopia will go to Darfur, Chad and then the Democratic Republic of Congo. — AFP