AU mission extended to year-end but no deal on UN force

The African Union has extended the mandate of its peacekeeping mission in Sudan until the end of 2006, and Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir has agreed to the reinforcement of the AU presence, but he fell short of agreeing to the eventual deployment of a full UN force for the region. Up until Sunday, AU leaders gathered this weekend for a summit in the Gambian capital Banjul, had said they would pull the AU's 7,000 peacekeepers out of Sudan at the end of September due to financial concerns, while Sudanese president al-Bashir had refused to agree to a better-resourced UN mandated force to replace them in the Darfur region. According to the UN more than two million people have been displaced by militia attacks and over 200,000 killed in the lawless region. But speaking to reporters after meeting with al-Bashir, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said the Sudanese leader had "agreed on the immediate need to strengthen the AU mission in Darfur". Annan said he pressed al-Bashir to agree to a UN force in Darfur, but added "on this point we agreed that the dialogue had to continue." Annan was nonetheless optimistic that UN troops could get on the ground in Darfur. "In the world of politics things change. We hear 'never' and 'forever', and yet it does come around and so I am still expecting that in time there will be a UN peacekeeping force in Darfur," he said. Congo president Denis Sassou Nguesso, who holds the revolving AU presidency, later told reporters that the African Union had agreed to the Secretary General's call for "flexibility" on their deadline for troops to pull out. "On the request of the secretary general, the AU will continue to fulfill its mission until the end of the year," Sassou Nguesso said. A donors’ conference will be held in Brussels on 18 July to get financial and logistical support for the extended AU mission, Annan said. AU soldiers in Darfur have complained about running out of everything from weapons to telephones, undermining efforts to stop the killing in the war-torn region. nr/ccr