The UN Security Council has arrived in Sudan with assurances that the UN has no intention of taking over the country and sees the government as a partner in promoting peace.
The government has been very reluctant to allow a UN peacekeeping force to take over from the 7,000-strong African Union force now in conflict-wracked Darfur, and fears of UN intervention were fueled last month when a council resolution to spur planning for a handover was adopted under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which allows military action.
Britain's UN ambassador Emyr Jones Parry, who is leading the council mission, said shortly after the delegation arrived at a Khartoum hotel late on Monday that he recognized some Sudanese "took amiss" the last council resolution, which they had hoped would pay tribute to the government for signing a peace agreement with the largest rebel faction in Darfur.
The UN has become increasingly involved in Sudan since November 2003 -- following the eruption of the Darfur conflict -- and is running a massive humanitarian operation in the vast western region as well as a 10,000-strong UN peacekeeping operation to monitor the peace agreement of January last year that ended a 21-year civil war.
At least 180,000 people have been killed and more than 2 million displaced in Darfur since rebel groups made up of ethnic Africans rose up against the Arab-led Khartoum government in early 2003. The government is accused of responding by unleashing Arab militias known as the Janjaweed who have been accused of some of the worst atrocities -- but it denies any involvement.
Jones Parry said the UN was involved in Sudan "because of the responsibility of the international community to alleviate hardship, to avoid the atrocities and so on."
"We're doing it in support of the people of Sudan. We're not doing it for any takeover. We're doing it with the government of Sudan all the time, and we're not seeking in any way to usurp the powers of the government of Sudan," he said.
But many Sudanese feel otherwise, in varying degrees.
An editorial on Monday in the independent opposition paper Rae Al Shaab, called the Security Council mission "a visit by an unwelcome guest."
An editorial in Al-Intibaha, a hard-line daily supporting Sudan's Muslim-dominated north, was entitled "No Welcome for UN Security Council."
"The visit of the council is meant to be a full international siege, a load on the chest of the Sudanese people and a continuation of the pressure to dispatch yet more foreign troops to Darfur, nothing else, nothing more," Rae Al Shaab said.
RSS