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Peacekeepers should prepare
to leave Darfur: Sudan |
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UNITED
NATIONS(November 25, 2009) - Khartoum's U.N. envoy,
rejecting a bleak U.N. assessment of the situation in Sudan's conflict-torn
western Darfur region, said on Monday it was time for international
peacekeepers to prepare to leave.
Saying it omitted key information, Sudan's U.N. ambassador, Abdalmahmoud
Abdalhaleem, criticized the latest report about Darfur by U.N. Secretary-General
Ban Ki-moon, which says Khartoum has broken a deal on deploying the
peacekeepers.
"One big fact should be the focus of the report -- that the war
is over," he told Reuters. "With peace in sight, the U.N.
should, in coordination with the African Union and Sudanese government,
plan for an exit strategy."
The U.N.-AU mission in Darfur, known as UNAMID, has been fraught with
difficulties. For nearly two years, the mission's commanders have
faced bureaucratic delays and other obstacles in deploying the 26,000
peacekeepers approved by the U.N. Security Council.
Ban's new report says there are now close to 20,000 troops and police
deployed in Darfur, the site of what U.N. officials say is one of
the worst humanitarian crises in the world.
The report also accuses Sudan of harassing and limiting movements
of UNAMID personnel in breach of an agreement with Khartoum on their
deployment.
"The repeated incidents of government officials preventing access
to UNAMID patrols are a direct violation of the Status of Forces Agreement
with the government of the Sudan and a serious impediment to the mission's
capacity to implement its mandate," Ban said in the report.
The harassment included bureaucratic delays, warning shots fired at
UNAMID, weapons pointed at convoys and Sudanese army helicopters flying
low over UNAMID "in a threatening manner."
The Darfur conflict began in 2003 when mostly non-Arab rebels revolted
after accusing Khartoum of neglecting Darfur. A counterinsurgency
campaign drove more than 2 million people from their homes. The United
Nations says as many as 300,000 people died, but Khartoum rejects
that figure. |
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