7 000 peacekeepers for Sudan
2004-11-21 21:26
Khartoum - The United Nations plans to launch a peacekeeping mission to southern Sudan in February 2005, UN special representative to Sudan Jan Pronk announced on Sunday in Nairobi.
Preparations to deploy the initial assignment of about 7 000 troops were complete, Pronk said in Nairobi.
The soldiers would be deployed mainly in southern Sudan, shortly after the Sudanese government in the Moslem north and rebels in the Christian-dominated south were expected to have signed a peace accord in January to end decades of animosity.
Pronk said more troops would be deployed six months after the peace deal.
The special envoy was speaking one day after the UN security council held an extra-ordinary meeting in Nairobi, where the warring parties in conflict pledged to bring about a comprehensive settlement at the end of December.
The security council had unanimously passed a resolution on Sudan on Friday, warning the parties to fulfil their commitment to peace or face punishment measures.
Sudan's civil war erupted in 1983 after then President Jaffer Mohammed Numeiri imposed the Islamic sharia law on the
Christian-animist south of the country.
The parties have also been at loggerheads with each other over the distribution of income from the Sudan's oil resources which are mostly concentrated in the South.
During the 21-year conflict, more than two million people have been killed and more than four million displaced.
Pronk said the UN would close its sub-offices assisting the Sudanese people in Sudan's neighbouring countries for six months to reopen them afterwards in southern Sudan. - Sapa-dpa
- SAPA