Sudan wants British troops

2004-07-22 22:10

Paris - Sudan said on Thursday it would withdraw its troops from the violence-wracked Darfur region if Britain sends forces in under a reported contingency plan by London, as Pope John Paul II dispatched an envoy to urge a rapid end to the crisis.

If British Prime Minister Tony Blair orders soldiers to deploy to the troubled western area of Sudan, as a report in the Guardian newspaper suggested, "let him inform us officially and what we will do is withdraw our troops from Darfur", Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail said during a visit to Paris.

"We will give him the chance if he can give security to Darfur," he said, but warned the foreign troops would likely find themselves bogged down by Iraq-style resistance.

"In one or two months these forces are going to be considered by people of Darfur as occupying forces and the same incidents you are now facing in Iraq are going to be repeated in Darfur," he said.

In London, Blair called the newspaper's report "premature".

"Now we rule nothing out, but we're not at the stage yet (of sending troops) ... because we have a strategy that we are implementing now," Blair said, although he added that Western nations had a "moral responsibility" to take action.

The Guardian article quoted an unnamed government official as saying the deployment plan was one of a number of options Blair had ordered up in response to the Darfur conflict.

The new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, backed moves towards possible international intervention, saying: "I think that the urgency of the matter is such that we can only welcome that there are many who are exploring many options."

So far, an estimated 10 000 people have been killed and one million left homeless in confrontations between rebels who rose up in February last year and government troops and their affiliated Arab militias.

The United Nations has said the militias, known as the Janjaweed, have carried out a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing against black Africans in the region. Rights groups, including Amnesty International, have spoken of them systematically raping women and children.

Several Western countries, among them the United States, Britain and France, have put increasing pressure on Khartoum to disarm the militias and allow humanitarian aid to reach the stricken populations.

Initial peace talks have foundered and no improvement in the situation has yet been seen, however.

- AFP