Bush urges larger UN role in Darfur Pushes for more peacekeepers, quicker US aid By Barry Schweid May 9, 2006 The Boston Globe Original Source: http://www.boston.com/news/world/africa/articles/2006/05/09/bush_urges_larger_un_role_in_darfur/ WASHINGTON -- President Bush called yesterday for the United Nations to take over peacekeeping in the Darfur region of Sudan and promised to expedite food aid. He welcomed a proposed peace accord as ''the beginnings of hope for Darfur's poverty-stricken population. Bush said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would go to the United Nations today to press for a new UN resolution increasing the number of peacekeepers. ''Darfur has a chance to begin anew, Bush said. He also urged Congress to act on a request for $225 million in emergency food aid for Darfur, and said he was ordering the emergency purchase of more than 44,000 tons of food and was dispatching five ships to carry it to the region. The $225 million requested in March is in addition to $215 million already contributed to the World Food Program, said Randall Tobias, administrator of the US Agency for International Development. ''The rest of the world should step up, Tobias said in an interview. The second-largest contributor, he said, was Libya, which donated $4.5 million for food, followed by Canada, with $3 million. Despite a precarious security situation, about 85 percent of the food gets through to the people who need it, and the other 15 percent is held in reserve until it can be delivered, Tobias said. About 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur -- either by violence or by disease and famine -- since ethnic African rebels rose up in early 2003, accusing Sudan's Arab-led government of discrimination. An additional 2 million have been forced from their homes, many by the Janjaweed, an Arab militia accused of killings and rapes in attacks on ethnic African villages. Khartoum denies charges that it backs the militia. Bush telephoned Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir seeking his support for a large UN peacekeeping force, but did not get a firm commitment, Cindy L. Courville, Bush's special adviser on Darfur, told reporters in a telephone interview. The aim is to nearly double the 7,200 African Union peacekeeping force on the ground in Darfur and put the expanded force under UN control. In New York, John R. Bolton, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said the Security Council would meet today on Darfur. Bolton said the United States was circulating a proposed resolution that would extend the UN peacekeeping in southern Sudan to the Western Darfur region. That 10,000-strong force is monitoring a January 2005 peace accord that ended a 21-year civil war between the Sudanese government and southern rebels that cost millions of lives. ''America will not turn away from this tragedy, Bush said, standing alongside Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick, just back from Darfur where he played a role in arranging a Darfur cease-fire. Tensions remained high, however, in Sudan, where Darfur refugees rioted yesterday and forced the UN humanitarian chief to rush from their camp, then later attacked African peacekeepers and killed a translator. The violence broke out as Jan Egeland, UN undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, toured Kalma camp, home to about 90,000 displaced people driven from their villages in Darfur. He was met by about 1,000 protesters demanding that UN peacekeepers be deployed in the region. The protesters attacked a translator traveling with Egeland after someone in the crowd accused the man of working with the Janjaweed, UN spokeswoman Dawn Blalock said. The translator, who worked for the humanitarian agency Oxfam, was pulled into a UN van and escaped uninjured. Footage by a CNN correspondent in the same van showed angry protesters reaching into the back of the vehicle trying to grab the translator and drag him out as they hit the van's windows with sticks. Protesters also smashed windows in another vehicle in the UN convoy as they sped away, Blalock said. Egeland and the rest of the convoy returned safely to the nearby town of Nyala in South Darfur, she said. About a half-hour later, the crowd attacked unarmed African Union peacekeepers at a nearby compound, killing a Sudanese translator working with the union and escaping with communications equipment from the site, she said. Many Darfuris say the union's 7,000-member force, which is chronically undermanned and undersupplied, does little to protect them. British-based Oxfam withdrew its six staffers from Kalma camp after the riots.