Darfur: AU needs more money
2006-02-08 08:55
Khartoum - Sudan's junior foreign minister has reiterated his country's opposition to plans to send United Nations peacekeepers to Darfur, saying money for such a force will be better spent bolstering an African Union mission already in the troubled western region.
Samani Al-Wasila said: "If there is a possibility of sending new forces to Darfur by the UN and the international community, forces that would cost double the costs of the AU troops, then why shouldn't this money be used for boosting the African Union forces?"
Last week, the UN security council authorised planning for the expected UN takeover of peacekeeping operations in Darfur. The AU had agreed in principle to transform its underfunded, understaffed and under-equipped force in Darfur into a UN force.
World organisation
Such a move was supported by many security council members, but had been strongly opposed by Sudan.
Al-Wasila said: "Government consent is an essential precondition for taking any such a move by the world organisation."
Sudanese officials had portrayed plans for UN involvement as part of a Western plot to weaken Sudan.
President Omar al-Bashir said: "There are some invisible hands that continue to manipulate the question of Darfur for tearing up the unity of Sudan in preparation for controlling and looting its resources."
Arab tribal militias
The agency said the president made the remarks at the opening of a regional medical meeting in his capital.
Al-Bashir's government was accused of unleashing Arab tribal militias to murder and rape civilians and lay waste to villages in Darfur in response to a separatist uprising. The government denied the charge.
Decades of low-level tribal clashes over land and water in the vast western Darfur region erupted into large-scale violence in early 2003 after ethnic African tribes took up arms, accusing the Arab-dominated central government of neglect.
- AP