By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council is setto renew a mandate for peacekeepers in Darfur on Thursday in aresolution that will echo African concerns at efforts to indictSudan's president for war crimes there.
Western powers agreed to wording making clear the councilis ready to discuss suspending any future InternationalCriminal Court indictment of President Omar Hassan al-Bashirfor genocide in the interest of peace in Darfur.
Five years of war have brought humanitarian disaster to thewestern Sudanese region and Darfur campaigners accused theworld on Thursday of failing to provide helicopters and otherbadly needed support for the struggling peacekeeping missionthere.
Western diplomats said the resolution extending the missionwould likely be adopted unanimously when the council meets at1900 GMT. Sudan's U.N. Ambassador Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem toldReuters it was an "acceptable" text for Khartoum.
Nearly half the 15-member council had made a reference tothe international court in the text a condition of renewing thepeacekeeping mandate.
Despite the accommodation to South Africa, Libya, Russia,China and four other council members on the court, one Westerndiplomat described the resolution as a "wake-up call" to theworld to finally end the Darfur crisis.
International experts and U.N. officials estimate at last200,000 people have died and 2.5 million been driven from theirhomes in Darfur since mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms inearly 2003 accusing central government of neglect.
Khartoum blames the Western media for exaggerating theconflict and says 10,000 people have been killed.
KILLINGS
Security in Darfur, an area roughly the size of Francewhere oil was discovered in 2005, has been deteriorating,making work ever harder for the world's biggest aid operation.Tension has grown since the moves to indict Bashir.
The resolution expresses the council's deep concern at theinsecurity and the killing of aid workers. It also demanded anend to all attacks on civilians "including by aerial bombing."
The rebels accuse the government of backing militia whohave devastated Darfur villages and of carrying out bombingraids, charges Khartoum has denied. But the council also hasthe rebels in mind with its call for an end to all violence.
On Thursday, two courts condemned 22 Darfur rebels to deathfor their involvement in an unprecedented raid on the capitalin May which killed more than 200 people.
The judgments brought the total so far sentenced to behanged to 30. The Darfur rebel Justice and Equality Movementhas threatened to reply militarily to any executions of theirmembers.
The U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force, known as UNAMID,has been struggling to stabilise the situation, but has onlydeployed some 9,500 troops and police out of a planned force of26,000, due to both Khartoum's demands and U.N. bureaucracy.
Adding to the force's difficulties, troop contributingcountries have failed to provide badly-needed helicopters andother equipment for the mission.
A report by aviation expert Thomas Withington, issued onThursday and endorsed by 30 rights groups and thinktanks, namedcountries which could easily provide the helicopters needed andsaid NATO members alone could supply 104 helicopters -- sixtimes the number needed.
The U.N. security council resolution calls on member statesto provide the helicopters 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.
The Non-Aligned Movement on Thursday joined the AfricanUnion and Arab League in expressing concern about theinternational court's efforts to try Bashir.
Meeting in Tehran, ministers from the group of almost 120developing nations said such action "could be conducive togreater destabilisation with far-reaching consequences for thecountry and the region."
(Additional reporting by Opheera McDoom and Ibrahim Hamdiin Khartoum, Fredrik Dahl in Tehran; Editing by MatthewTostevin)
