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UN sends peacekeepers to Sudan

Children roam in el-Fatih displacement camp, 38km from the Sudanese capital Khartoum Monday. Only one-half of the camp's population has been allocated plots of land, but they are not allowed to rebuild their homes on them. The UN said the international community and humanitarian groups have been focusing on Darfur, forgetting hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons who are now living in appalling conditions. PHOTO: AP

The UN Security Council voted to send 10,700 peacekeepers to Sudan to monitor a peace deal ending a 21-year-civil war, but left contentious issues of sanctions and how best to punish war criminals in the Darfur region for later debate.

The unanimous vote on the US backed resolution creating the UN's 17th active peacekeeping mission is the first significant Security Council action on Sudan since a UN-backed panel declared in late January that crimes against humanity -- but not genocide -- occurred in Darfur.

The peace deal that the new force will monitor is not connected to Darfur. But the council hopes the move will help bring about an end to the violence in Darfur, where the number of dead from a conflict between government-backed militias and rebels is now estimated at 180,000.

"We remain very concerned and disturbed by the situation in Darfur," Deputy US Ambassador Stuart Holliday said. "And we will continue working with our council colleagues to address that important question in the days ahead."

The US-backed resolution asks that the new mission work with an African Union peace mission in Sudan "with a view toward expeditiously reinforcing the effort to foster peace in Darfur."

While the vote will help quell criticism of council inaction over Darfur, the document purposely does not address key issues that would more directly influence that conflict: how to hold war crimes suspects from Darfur accountable, and whether to impose new sanctions on the country.

Several members of the council want the cases referred to the International Criminal Court, a body that the US opposes. China and Russia are the chief opponents of sanctions. Early on, the council had hoped to deal with all those issues in one resolution. But because agreement couldn't be reached, the US decided to split the issues into three resolutions and deal with the other two issues later on.

However, after the Americans presented their resolution on peacekeepers Wednesday, France put forward its own resolution that would prosecute Sudanese war crimes suspects before the International Criminal Court.

France and several other members of the council had always demanded that all the issues be dealt with at once, not piecemeal as the US proposes. The French move would force the US to choose between accepting a body it opposes or casting a politically damaging veto. That's because it was the US itself that had demanded swift action last year after declaring that genocide has occurred in Darfur, and does not want to appear to be holding up the process.

Early Thursday, however, France's UN Ambassador Jean-Marc de la Sabliere said he decided not to seek a vote this week on his resolution because "some delegations" wanted more time to consider it, and it would probably be submitted next week. The US has repeatedly says it opposes the ICC, but has not said directly if it will veto.

It's not clear how much the continued US opposition influenced France's decision. Several other diplomats said they had not had time to receive instruction from their capitals on how to vote.

After the vote on peacekeepers late Thursday, de la Sabliere remained adamant that the Sudan cases must go to the International Criminal Court, possibly presaging a new showdown with the Americans.

"It is not possible not to combat impunity, we need to put an end to impunity and the Security Council has to refer the situation in Darfur to the ICC," de la Sabliere said.

Conflict has engulfed Darfur since February 2003, when two non-Arab rebel groups took up arms against the Arab-dominated government to win more political and economic rights for the region's African tribes.
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