AP, UNITED NATIONS
The US is seeking to use a UN resolution that would extend the 12,700-strong UN peacekeeping mission in southern Sudan to pressing for a new joint UN-African Union peacekeeping force in conflict-wracked Darfur.
But the US draft is likely to face difficulties from Security Council members who want to keep the peacekeeping operation in the south separate from efforts to create a joint force.
The draft Security Council resolution circulated by the US on Monday would extend the UN force monitoring a 2005 peace deal that ended a 21-year civil war between Sudan's mostly Muslim north and the Christian and animist south for just three months -- until July 31.
US diplomats said the proposed short extension of the mandate was designed to keep up pressure on Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to approve a UN-AU "hybrid" force to help end the four-year conflict in Darfur, a vast western region about the size of France.
Russia's UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters he hadn't studied the text but said: "At first glance there were some issues raised which do not have to be in the draft resolution."
Council experts are expected to discuss the draft this week.
The US draft expresses "grave concern" at the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Darfur and "the increasing effects of the violence" in neighboring Chad and Central African Republic.
The US draft calls on all parties to implement a "heavy support package" with 3,000 UN troops, police and civilian personnel along with six attack helicopters which al-Bashir recently agreed to deploy to Darfur to beef up the beleaguered 7,000-strong AU force on the ground.
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