The ”severely paralysed” Darfur peace agreement ”does not resonate with the people” and is in danger of collapse, the head of the United Nations mission in Sudan wrote in his blog.
But Jan Pronk said the pact was still salvageable if revisions were made, calling it ”a good text, an honest compromise”. And he urged its quick implementation, saying, ”it meets more and more resistance” as time passes.
On Sunday, Pronk underlined in a statement e-mailed to the Associated Press by his office in Khartoum that in his blog entry last week he ”neither argued for a re-writing of the text, nor for a reopening of the talks”. He was apparently responding to news reports that misinterpreted his article.
The deal aimed at ending three years of bloodshed was signed on May 5 by the Sudanese government and the main rebel group in Darfur, the Sudan Liberation Movement, though a dissident SLM leader and another rebel group refused to sign.
It calls for a complete ceasefire between rebels and government forces — including a a pro-government militia of Arab nomads known as the Janjaweed that is blamed for most of the atrocities against ethnic African villagers.
On Wednesday, Pronk wrote, ”So far, nothing has been done. None of the deadlines agreed in the text of the agreement has been met.”
”It is no wonder that the people in Darfur get the idea that the DPA [Darfur Peace Agreement] is just another text without substance, like earlier ceasefire agreements, and is not meant to be kept,” he said. ”It is not yet too late to start implementation, but we seem to be running out of time.”
The head of the SLM, Minni Minnawi, threatened last month to pull out of the agreement if the international community did not support. He also warned that the peace deal could ”collapse soon” if UN peacekeepers did not reach Darfur.
Leaders at the African Summit in Gambia, which ends on Tuesday, were expected to press Sudan to accept UN peacekeepers. So far Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has blocked the idea, saying it would be the same as allowing foreign forces to occupy his country.
”Bringing UN forces to Darfur is totally rejected by all Sudanese people,” al-Bashir told a rally in Khartoum on Thursday.
The African Union currently has 7 000 peacekeepers in Darfur, but has said it cannot handle the project long-term and wants its force replaced by better-equipped and better-funded UN peacekeepers.
Sudan is prepared to pay the cost of the AU forces for the next six months, during which al-Bashir predicted the security situation would improve and there would be no need to deploy troops under the UN, Sudan’s official news agency Suna reported on Sunday.
Pronk said the arrival of UN peacekeepers would be one of three steps to save Darfur, along with implementing the peace agreement and broadening support for it.
”Without an effective UN peace force the security of the displaced people and other victims of the war cannot be guaranteed.
The AU peace force has done a good job but it is too weak,” he said.
Pronk said that without the peace agreement’s implementation, the humanitarian situation in Darfur was worsening.
”The demilitarised zones, the buffer zones and the humanitarian routes have not yet been demarcated. As a result of this the humanitarian assistance to people in areas to which we did not have full access during he war, cannot be resumed,” he said.
On Sunday, Pronk defended last week’s blog article by reiterating the three steps he said were needed to rescue the conflict-wracked area, emphasising that the broadening and implementing the peace agreement should take place through
mechanisms established under it — not by creating new ones.
He also urged that ”more should be done to persuade” rebels who did not sign on to the peace agreement to join it.
Nearly 200 000 people have been killed in Darfur and more than two million displaced since members of ethnic African tribes rose in revolt against the Arab-led Khartoum government in early 2003.
Sudan’s government is accused of responding by unleashing the Janjaweed. – Sapa-AP