US drops opposition to UN peacekeeping force

The US government has dropped its opposition to the deployment of United Nations peacekeeping troops to Cote d'Ivoire and hopes that Congress will now vote in favour of the move, John Negroponte, the US Ambassador to the United Nations has said. Negroponte said in New York on Wednesday that the US government notified Congress last week that it now favoured a UN plan to send more than 6,000 peacekeeping troops to Cote d'Ivoire. The ambassador said he was hopeful that Congress would vote on the issue by the end of February. The UN Security Council is expected to vote on the dispatch of a peacekeeping force to Cote d'Ivoire on 27 February when the present mandate of the small UN military observer mission in the country expires. Negotponte stressed that US legislators still had to signal their approval of the peacekeeping force before the Bush administration could vote for it in the UN Security Council. "Let me just clarify.....some of the stories suggested that we'd already approved this mission, and what I told you yesterday....was that we have sent a notification to Congress," Negroponte said. "And until we have cleared that process and completed the notification, then and only then, will we be in a position to vote in favour of the peacekeeping mission," Negroponte added. "We're certainly hopeful to be able to do that." A source at the US mission to the United Nations in New York told IRIN on Thursday said that the Bush Administration had recommended to Congress that the United Nations send in a force at the full strength of 6,240 men recommended by UN Secretary- General Kofi Annan. "After 15 days, assuming there is no Congressional opposition to the proposed PKO [peacekeeping operation], the Administration can then support a UN Security Council resolution establishing the PKO," the official noted. Congressional approval is important because Washington foots 27 percent of the bill for all UN peacekeeping operation and the president relies on congressional approval for expenditure. Negroponte did not say how many troops Washington would like to see in the proposed peacekeeping force, whose mission would be to oversee the disarmament of rebels occupying the north of Cote d'Ivoire and guarantee security during the run-up to elections planned for October 2005. But he said: "We felt that the proposals put forward by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations made sense to us in terms of the kinds of new duties that would be undertaken by a peacekeeping mission". Other members of the Security Council have supported for sometime the dispatch of a UN peacekeeping force to Cote d'Ivoire to shore up a year-old peace agreement which President Laurent Gbagbo has been slow to implement in full. The UN force would absorb some 1,400 West African peacekeeping troops already deployed in Cote d'Ivoire, which plunged into civil war in September 2002. But the UN peacekeepers would not incorporate the 4,000-strong French peacekeeping force, which currently maintains security along the frontline that has divided the country in two. According to the proposals put forward by Annan in January, the French would simply provide an independently commanded rapid reaction force which could be used to support the blue helmets. Welcoming the US change of heart, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin told the French newspaper Le Figaro: "The blockage has been lifted since the US has agreed to the setting up of a peacekeeping mission of 6,000 men." De Villepin added: "In Cote d'Ivoire we are now entering a new phase with the presence of a UN force to conduct disarmament and elections. The UN has the know-how, experience and legitimacy to help Cote d'Ivoire come out definitively of the period of violence and tension it has experience these last months."