The UN Security Council failed to agree on a formal condemnation of a surprise attack that killed 10 African Union (AU) peacekeepers in Sudan's Darfur region because of a disagreement over whether to call it a terrorist act perpetrated by rebels.
Ghana's UN Ambassador Leslie Christian said the council would meet again yesterday to work on a presidential statement -- which becomes part of the official council record.
He told reporters in a brief press statement -- which does not become part of the council's official record -- that members condemn the attack, deplore the 10 deaths and injuries to 14 peacekeepers, and want the perpetrators identified and brought to justice.
"The reason we couldn't come to an agreement," South Africa's UN Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo said on Monday, "was because most of us feel that this was a terrorist act" and every report says it was done by rebels, but some council members argued that they wanted to wait for the results of an investigation to find out what happened.
The rebels first attacked the AU peacekeepers' camp at 7:30pm on Saturday and then returned at 4am the next day, overruning it.?Most of the 157 peacekeepers on the base were Nigerian but there were also military observers from Botswana, Senegal and Mali.
"In all descriptions that's a very cruel terrorist attack," Kumalo said, "so we wanted very strong language that said that -- but others were feeling that we had to be cautious."
Sudan's UN Ambassador Abdelmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamed said the AU has already named some elements of the rebel Justice and Equality Movement and Sudan Liberation Movement who had been "very visible" in the area as the perpetrators of the attack.
US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said "the AU is still not able to say which group is responsible at this point."
Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno, who briefed the closed-door emergency council meeting, also told several reporters afterwards that very often first reports are incomplete and sometimes misleading. He said the AU and the UN would be conducting a joint investigation of the attack.
The attack "really shows how important it is to have a very robust force and a very mobile force because this tragedy would not have happened if the African Union had the capacity to quickly reinforce this threatened position," he said.
The AU force had no capacity to call in reinforcements after the first attack, he explained.
Darfur rebels have grown increasingly hostile to the AU force, saying it favors the Sudanese government and has failed to protect Darfur civilians.
More than 200,000 people have died in Darfur since ethnic African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated central government, accusing it of discrimination.
Khartoum is accused of retaliating by unleashing janjaweed militias, which are blamed for the worst atrocities against civilians in a conflict that has displaced more than 2.5 million people.
The UN Security Council has approved a 26,000-strong joint AU-UN force to replace the 6,000 AU troops who are ill-equipped and have gone for months without being paid.
Guehenno said he hopes the attack does not affect contributions to the AU-UN hybrid force and its deployment.
"I hope this tragedy really strengthens the hand of all those who see the importance of having very quickly a very strong force which will have a predominantly African character, but which needs actually to have all the capacities" to respond quickly, including helicopters and other heavy equipment which the AU force does not have, he said.
Khalilzad, the US ambassador, called for the speedy deployment of a UN heavy support package that was authorized by the Security Council to beef up the AU force and lay the groundwork for deployment of the hybrid force.
It includes 3,000 UN troops, police and civilian personnel along with aircraft and other equipment.
"This incident highlights the need to have an effective hybrid force on the ground," Khalilzad said. "This force has to be capable and some of this capability can only come from outside Africa."
The Sudanese government wants the hybrid force to be almost entirely African, though the council resolution authorizing it calls for it to be "predominantly African."
Guehenno and key Western nations including the US are now likely to insist that key units in the hybrid force -- including helicopters and other transport and logistics units -- come from outside Africa.
The UN has not been in touch with potential troop contributors to the hybrid force since the attack, Guehenno said, but when they meet "we will just reinforce our point that the troops have to come well-equipped and ready for a very tough situation."
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