U.N. Gets Proposal to Speed New Darfur Force 
By Warren Hoge
May 16, 2006
The New York Times
Original Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/16/world/africa/16nations.html
UNITED NATIONS, May 15 — The United States introduced a Security Council resolution on Monday calling for strict observance of a new peace accord in Darfur and speeded-up arrangements for a United Nations peacekeeping force to replace the African Union force now there.
John R. Bolton, the American ambassador, said he hoped for a vote on Tuesday.
The move followed a meeting of the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, earlier Monday that urged the Sudanese government to drop objections to putting the force in Darfur, an area the size of France, under eventual United Nations command.
The African Union diplomats also gave two holdout rebel groups two weeks to sign the peace accord between the Sudanese government and the main rebel organization or face sanctions against their leaders.
The accord, signed May 5 in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, was aimed at ending a conflict — marked by extraordinary brutality and labeled genocide by the Bush administration — that has killed more than 200,000 people and forced two million villagers from their homes.
The cease-fire is already being widely violated, and the 7,000-member African Union force is unable and ill-equipped to exert meaningful control.
Jan Pronk, the United Nations envoy to Sudan, told reporters in Addis Ababa, It is now high time to take very concrete steps towards a stronger force.
Jan Egeland, the United Nations emergency aid coordinator, who has just visited Darfur, said at a news conference in Geneva on Monday that failure to put the peace accord into effect would bring on a downward spiral which will get totally out of control and go into the abyss.
The resolution sets up a timetable for beginning the transition by the end of September. It says that a joint African Union-United Nations assessment mission should go to Darfur within a week and that Secretary General Kofi Annan should make detailed recommendations on the force's size, mandate and makeup a week after the mission's return.
It also urges the government of Sudan to cooperate with the United Nations in planning the new force and says strong and effective measures will be taken against any individuals or groups that try to sabotage the peace agreement.
Despite the urgency of the crisis, the resolution has undergone some weakening since Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called for prompt action on Darfur last Tuesday at a special session of foreign ministers at the Security Council.
The draft at that point authorized immediate logistical assistance to the African Union troops from the existing 10,000-member United Nations force monitoring a cease-fire that ended a separate conflict in southern Sudan.