The African Union needs increased United Nations support if it is to continue its peacekeeping operation in Darfur, European Commission aid chief Louis Michel said on Monday.
”In the current situation, the AU cannot assume completely the job if it does not have an important contribution from the UN.,” Michel told reporters at the AU headquarters.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Michel arrived in Addis Ababa for talks with their African counterparts after a 24-hour visit to Sudan to try to break an impasse over peacekeepers for Sudan’s vast west.
Efforts by the United States and other Western countries to convince Khartoum to accept a 20 000-strong UN military force to replace 7 000 under-funded and ill-equipped AU troops have stalled.
Khartoum has said a UN presence in Darfur would amount to an invasion force and Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has accused the West of trying to recolonise his oil-producing country.
Western powers insist Khartoum must reconsider its objections to international troops to put an end to a conflict that has killed about 200 000 people and driven millions from their homes since 2003, when mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms against the government charging it with neglect.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the choice for Khartoum was between ”cooperation and confrontation”.
Faced with a stalemate over peacekeepers and the possibility of a security vacuum in Darfur if AU peacekeepers leave when their extended mandate expires on December 31, aid officials and diplomats have begun discussing an option called AU-Plus.
This would involve an extended AU Darfur mission, augmented by UN support, with greater policing power for African troops.
During talks with the EU envoys on Saturday evening in Khartoum, al-Bashir seemed open to the idea of strengthening the AU mission with more support from the UN, the head of the EU in Sudan, Kent Degerfelt, told Reuters.
”It would not be troops but logistical and financial support,” Degerfelt said.
Michel said he still supported a transfer to the UN but admitted that could not happen as long as Khartoum rejected the plan.
He said the international community needed to reassure the Sudanese government, and that one way to do so was to put more pressure on rebels who had not signed a Darfur peace agreement.
Only one of three rebel factions signed an AU-negotiated peace deal with the Sudanese government in May. Since then, violence in western Sudan has increased as rebel groups fracture and all sides try to make territorial gains ahead of possible international intervention to end the violence.
Michel and the EU’s justice and security commissioner, Franco Frattini, are due to talk about Darfur with the AU’s Peace and Security Commissioner Said Djinnit later on Monday.
The EU is the biggest contributor to the AU mission in Darfur, giving €242-million since it was launched.
Barroso, Michel and seven other EU commissioners were at the AU’s headquarters for their first meeting in Africa with the AU Commission. They announced €55-million in aid, aimed at strengthening the AU.
”Without its support we would not have been able to face many of our obligations,” AU chairperson Alpha Oumar Konare said of EU help in an opening speech to the meeting.
Barroso said the EU wanted to have greater political weight in Africa, to match its trade relations and aid.
”It is the opposite of patronising, or neo-colonialism; we are two economic, political and cultural partners who want to deepen their relation … be strategic partners,” Michel said.
The 53-member body AU was created in 2002. The wealthier and more integrated EU builds upon cooperation launched among 6 EU states in the 1950’s and now has 25 members. — Reuters