The United Nations Security Council favours a rapid deployment of UN peacekeepers in eastern Chad and north-eastern Central African Republic to protect civilians caught in the spillover of fighting in Sudan’s Darfur region, diplomats said on Tuesday.
Speaking after closed door consultations by the 15-member body on the volatile situation on Sudan’s borders, the envoys said France and the 15-member council’s African members were to draft a resolution on the deployment following a round of consultations.
Slovakia’s UN ambassador Peter Burian, who chairs the council for this month, said a draft might be ready for a vote ”hopefully within a couple of weeks”.
Diplomats stressed the urgency of the humanitarian situation in the region and said the proposed text would be based on recommendations made in a recent report by UN chief Ban Ki-moon.
In a 27-page report to the UN Security Council released a week ago, Ban recommended sending up to 11 000 peacekeepers to Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR), both of which border on Sudan’s western Darfur province.
Ban proposed two options for the force. The first would involve a mobile force of 6 000 UN troops backed by helicopters and aircraft. The second option, which Ban favoured, would deploy a ground-based mission with about 10 900 soldiers if contributing nations were unable to provide enough aircraft.
Asked which option the council was supporting, Ghana’s UN ambassador Nana Effah-Apenteng, whose country currently chairs the African Union, replied: ”We have to settle on the option which would be the most effective.”
He also said sponsors of the draft resolution were seeking to allay concern expressed by Chadian President Chad President Idriss Déby Itno about the proposed force.
”I don’t think the Council would push against the will of the government of Chad,” the Ghanaian envoy said. ”We’ll encourage him to make a decision but he wants to be given the full details.”
In his report last week, Ban said Deby made it clear that he had asked the Security Council to deploy a ”civilian force”, not a military force and voiced concern that the international community was pushing for the deployment of a UN military force in Chad because it had so far been unable to persuade Khartoum to allow such a force in Darfur.
”Everybody was stressing that there needs to be a force on the ground” [in Chad and CAR] to protect the camps and defuse the tension on the border,” Burian said.
The United Nations says about 200 000 people have died in the Darfur fighting and 2,5-million have been displaced since 2003. — Sapa-AFP