Darfur 'needs 15 000 troops'

2005-05-25 21:45

Nairobi - An international force of at least 12 000 to 15 000 troops is needed urgently in Sudan's troubled Darfur region to stop the killing of civilians, said the International Crisis Group (ICG) on Wednesday.

As a high-level conference on the African Union Mission in Sudan was set to start on Thursday in Ethiopia, the group said the size of the force in Darfur had to be drastically increased and its mandate strengthened, if there were to be any chance of stabilising the situation there.

The conflict in Darfur, which covered an area the size of France in western Sudan, started in 2003 when local rebels rose up against the government saying they were being marginalised.

The Khartoum government then unleashed the Janjaweed militia in Darfur, which had since been accused of carrying out atrocities against civilians.

AU has more than 2 000 troops

An estimated 300 000 people had died as a result of the conflict, while two million people had been displaced.

The AU had just more than 2 000 troops on the ground, although it had decided to increase the force with another 7 700 personnel, scheduled for deployment in September.

The ICG said this was too little, too late.

The group said on Wednesday: "It is clear the current security and humanitarian situation in Darfur demands a much greater presence than is currently in train."

Although civilians had been routinely targeted in Darfur for more than two years, the mandate of the AU force was only to monitor a ceasefire agreement, which was signed between the Darfur rebels and the government, but was often violated.

The government was responsible for protecting the region's civilians.

ICG President Gareth Evans said: "Khartoum has utterly failed in its responsibility to protect its own citizens."

Mandate to protect civilians

In a letter to Western leaders, ICG said they must be ready to consider a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation-led multinational force for Darfur, with a mandate to actively protect civilians.

It said a minimum presence of 12 000 to 15 000 troops was needed, and that it should be deployed within 60 days.

Launching its annual report on Wednesday, the rights group, Amnesty International, said the Sudanese government had caused a human rights catastrophe in Darfur, and that the international community, by doing too little too late, had betrayed hundreds of thousands of people.

A donor conference on Thursday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, would be co-chaired by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who has said that $350m was needed for Darfur.

Annan would travel to Darfur and to southern Sudan, where a peace agreement was signed earlier this year after two decades of war.

At a separate conference in April, donor countries promised $4.5bn for the reconstruction of the southern part of the country.

- SAPA