EU to meet half the cost of AU mission in Darfur

The European Union (EU) is to pay more than half the cost of the African Union (AU) peacekeeping mission in Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region, EU's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said on Saturday. Solana said the 25-member body would approve the funding on Monday to support an enhanced AU-peacekeeping mission in Darfur. "Given the situation in Darfur, this mission has to be a success," Solana told journalists after a meeting in Addis Ababa with Alpha Oumar Konare, the chairman of the AU Commission. "The African Union is going to be a success with the cooperation of the international community," said Solana, who was on a two-day visit to Addis Ababa, where the AU has its headquarters. "I would prefer to see how we solve it before we go into a definition of what it is," Solana said when asked whether he would describe the violence in Darfur as genocide. The AU’s Peace and Security Council agreed Wednesday to increase its protection force in Darfur from 390 to over 3,000 troops and civilian police in an effort to end attacks against civilians by armed groups. The one-year mission will be made up of 2,241 troops, of which, 450 will be military observers, and 815 civilian police. There will also be 164 support staff. Currently, some 300 Rwandan and Nigerian troops are already in Darfur to protect some 80 observers already on the ground. The 53-member AU describes the new mission as a "peacekeeping operation". It is mandated to "protect civilians whom it encounters [and who] are under imminent threat", but the AU has emphasized that the protection of civilians is the primary responsibility of the Sudanese government. The pan-African body estimates that its expanded operation in Darfur would cost US $221 million for one year. "Since the approval on Wednesday of the AU’s new plan, we have also in the EU agreed on the amount of money that we are going to deploy to help in the operation," said Solana. "We are going to put about 100 million dollars from the EU and when you add that to what the member states are going to do - you will have more than half of the operational cost. We are very pleased to say that." In addition to the EU funding, Britain has pledged to contribute $25 million to the AU mission, Solana said. The strengthened force led by Rwandan troops should be in Darfur by early next month. According to the UN, an estimated 70,000 people have died and 1.5 million have been forced from their homes in the Darfur crisis, which began in February 2003. The war in Darfur pits the Sudanese government troops and militias, allegedly allied to the government, against rebels fighting to end what they have called marginalisation and discrimination of the region's inhabitants by the state. The conflict has displaced an estimated 1.45 million people and sent another 200,000 fleeing across the border into Chad.