UN urges larger African peacekeeping force for Darfur

An 8,000-strong African Union (AU) peacekeeping force with an enhanced mandate would be needed to protect the nearly two million displaced people in the western Sudanese region of Darfur and bring stability to the volatile area, a UN spokesperson said on Friday. "Jan Pronk [the UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for the Sudan] felt that, for the AU [African Union] to strengthen its role in Darfur, it would need to expand its capacity to 8,000 troops and adopt a mandate with a stronger focus on protection," Radhia Achouri, spokeswoman for the UN Advance Mission in Sudan (UNAMIS), told IRIN. "When you look at their [the AU] experience on the ground, whenever they were there, such as in Labado [a town in South Darfur which suffered some of the worst fighting in recent months], the situation stabilised," Achouri added. An AU-led assessment team, consisting of senior AU, UN, EU (European Union) and US officials, arrived in Addis Ababa on Friday, having completed a week-long assessment of peacekeeping requirements in Darfur. The team was expected to finalise its joint report over the next few days. "The assessment team looked with satisfaction at the situation in local communities in which the AU was present," Nourreddine Mezni, spokesman of the AU in Khartoum told IRIN on Friday, adding that the AU presence had encouraged local communities and internally displaced persons to resume their normal life activities. A preliminary observation by the assessment team, Mezni noted, was that, given the current AU troop strength of 2,193 soldiers, the mission was doing the utmost within the possibilities of their limited resources. "The assessment mission is looking at ways to enhance the performance of AMIS [African Union Mission in Darfur] and it is understood that proposals to increase the size of its force are part of that discussion," Mezni added. Pronk was in Luxembourg to meet with the EU ministers to request technical, financial and logistical support for the AU forces in Darfur, and EU troop commitments for the proposed UN peace support mission for southern Sudan. "If the AU would agree to expand their number of troops in Darfur, additional support is needed, as it would pose a considerable burden on the African countries that are providing the troops," Achouri added. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council on Thursday extended the mandate of UNAMIS by a week, after having done the same on 10 March, while its members discussed the establishment of the peace mission for southern Sudan. A draft resolution, prepared by the US, seeks to authorise the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force of over 10,000 soldiers for southern Sudan, impose targeted sanctions on individuals responsible for atrocities in Darfur and specify where to try the perpetrators.