U.N. envoy says Sudan strategy failing 

March 21, 2006
USA Today
Original Source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-03-21-sudan-un_x.htm?POE=NEWISVA


UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Two months after warning that the U.N. strategy in Sudan has failed, the top United Nations envoy for the country told the Security Council on Tuesday that fighting has only gotten worse and innocent people are still dying.

Jan Pronk said that much of Sudan is in trouble and the international community is still not acting fast enough. New violence could engulf the east unless the Security Council helps push for a peace deal, while Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army has terrorized the south, he said. 

And in Darfur, the western region that has seen an estimated 180,000 deaths in the last three years, rapes, killings and human rights abuses have spread to several more towns.

In January I proposed that we would need to change our strategy because it failed, Pronk said. There was no peace agreement and the killings continued. Two months later, the situation remains the same.

The United Nations has described Darfur as the world's gravest humanitarian crisis. Along with the thousands of dead, more than 2 million people have been displaced by the fighting between ethnic African tribes and the Arab-dominated government and militias it backs.

That the international strategy has failed is obvious, Pronk said. First, the Security Council has been unable to stop the killing, and second, deadlines for a peace deal — including one for Dec. 31, 2004 — have passed with no resolution.

Pronk reiterated his demand for a new cease-fire deal that would punish violators. And he again demanded a robust peace force — a reference to proposals to replace the 7,000 African Union peacekeepers in Darfur with U.N. forces.

The cash-strapped African Union currently expects to hand over to the U.N. by September because of its financial and logistical limitations. Sudan opposes U.N. peacekeepers.

Pronk said the new force in Darfur should have up to 30,000 troops, but urged the Security Council not to take soldiers from a separate U.N. force monitoring a peace deal in the south.

My warning to the Security Council was please do not cannibalize our existing force in the south ... by taking away troops on the basis of your perception that everything is OK in the south, Pronk told reporters after he briefed the council. That is not the case.

Pronk said he warned the council that Sudanese are deeply suspicious of the United Nations and fear the Iraq scenario — that Sudan might see its sovereignty compromised.