U.N. council set to renew Darfur peacekeeping mandate
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council is setto renew a mandate for peacekeepers in Sudan's war-ravagedDarfur region on Thursday in a resolution calling for redoubledefforts to end a 5-year humanitarian disaster.
The 15 council members struck a deal on a revised Britishdraft resolution after Western powers agreed to include wordingthat echoes African Union concerns that International CriminalCourt moves to indict Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashirfor war crimes could derail the fragile Darfur peace process.
The resolution makes it clear the council is ready todiscuss suspending any future ICC genocide indictment of Bashirin the interest of peace in Darfur.
Western diplomats said the resolution would likely beadopted unanimously when the council meets at 8:00 p.m. Britishtime. Sudan's U.N. Ambassador Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem toldReuters it was an "acceptable" text for Khartoum.
Nearly half the council had made an ICC reference in thetext a condition of renewing the peacekeeping mandate.
Despite the accommodation to South Africa, Libya, Russia,China and four other council members on a possible indictmentof Bashir, one Western diplomat described the resolution as a"wake-up call" to the international community to finally endthe Darfur crisis.
International experts and U.N. officials estimate that atlast 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million been driven fromtheir homes in Darfur since mostly non-Arab rebels took up armsin early 2003 accusing central government of neglect.
Khartoum blames the Western media for exaggerating theconflict and says 10,000 people have been killed.
Security in Darfur, an area roughly the size of Francewhere oil was discovered in 2005, has been deteriorating.Civilians, humanitarian aid workers and peacekeepers have beenkilled and wounded, making it increasingly difficult for aidagencies to feed Darfur's 2.5 million hungry and displaced.
STRUGGLING PEACEKEEPERS
The resolution expresses the council's "deep concern forthe decreasing security of humanitarian personnel, includingkillings of humanitarian workers."
It also demands "an end to attacks on civilians, from anyquarter, including by aerial bombing."
The rebels have accused the government of backing militiawho have devastated Darfur villages with helicopter attacks,charges Khartoum has denied. But the council also has therebels in mind with its call for an end to all violence.
The U.N.-AU peacekeeping force, known as UNAMID, has beenstruggling to stabilize the situation, but only some 9,500troops and police have been deployed out of a planned force of26,000, partly due to Khartoum's insistence that mostpeacekeepers be Africans.
Adding to UNAMID's difficulties, troop contributingcountries have failed to provide badly-needed helicopters andother equipment for the mission.
Separately, a new report issued on Thursday by aviationexpert Thomas Withington and endorsed by 30 rights groups andthink tanks named the Czech Republic, India, Italy, Romania,Spain and Ukraine as countries which between them could provide71 transport helicopters to the mission while NATO memberstates could provide 104 helicopters.
The resolution calls on U.N. member states to provide thehelicopters and everything else UNAMID needs.
The United Nations hopes to have 80 percent of the fullmission deployed by the end of the year. The resolution urgesthe United Nations and Sudan to do everything possible to makeUNAMID fully functional.
(Additional reporting by Opheera McDoom; Editing by AlanElsner)