United Nations, Dec 6/2007 (AFP News)
The success of the planned UN-African Union peacekeeping mission in Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region is in peril for a lack of equipment such as crucial helicopters, UN chief Ban Ki-moon warned on Thursday. "We must absolutely have an effective, robust force. Without it, there can be no security," the secretary general told reporters. "But for this we need on-the-ground capability -- specifically helicopters. We're not getting them. Because of that the entire mission is at risk," he said, pleading with member states to supply 24 helicopters still not provided. The joint force of 26,000 mainly African troops (UNAMID) is to replace the under-funded and ill-equipped 7,000-strong African Union force known as AMIS which has served trying to stem the bloodshed in Darfur since 2004. But UNAMID still lacks crucial components, including a ground transport unit, 18 transport helicopters and six light tactical helicopters meant to provide air mobility and firepower to protect civilians and peacekeepers. "We are at a critical point. Time is running out," Ban said, two days before he was to fly to Bali, Indonesia for a key international conference on climate change. "We have only three weeks to go before the transfer of authority from AMIS to UNAMID." The secretary general said he had personally contacted "every possible contributor ... to no avail." And he announced that he had just sent a letter to the UN Security Council in which he also complained that despite his repeated appeals, "no member state has come forward to provide these vital assets."
In his letter, Ban said outsourcing the transport helicopters to civilian contractors had been considered but that it was "determined that, given the non-permissive security environment in Darfur, a civilian contractor would not be able to transport troops who would be required to respond to emergency security situations." He called on Security Council members to "live up to their responsibility to deliver" on implementation of their resolution on the establishment of UNAMID, noting: "It is time for them to walk their talk."
Diplomats have said several Western countries in a position to provide the helicopters are reluctant to do so because of a lack of confidence in the effectiveness of UNAMID's command and control structure. Ban said he was sending two senior advisers to the European Union-African Union summit in Lisbon this weekend "to directly engage with as many key leaders as possible on the subject." The two aides, UN Assistant Secretary General for peacekeeping operations Edmond Mulet and Ban's deputy chief of staff Kim Won-soo, were also to try to iron out remaining logistical issues with Sudan's President Omar al-Beshir and his delegation, including acquisition of land for UNAMID peacekeepers and permission for night flights.
Ban said his aides would also try to get formal confirmation that Khartoum, as suggested by Sudan's UN envoy Abdalmahmood Mohamad, had lifted its objections to UN plans to include contingents from Nepal and Thailand in UNAMID. UN planners also want to assign a Scandinavian engineering unit to the joint force. The UN chief warned that without an effective, robustly equipped UNAMID, there could be "no credible progress" in the deadlocked peace talks between Khartoum and Darfur rebels. "Rebel leaders will simply not join the process without an effective peacekeeping force in place," he noted.
On Wednesday UN and AU mediators held a fresh meeting in Sudan with Darfur rebel leaders who had boycotted peace talks with Khartoum in Libya last October, to coax them into forging "common ground" for the next round of bargaining in the Libyan city of Sirte. UNAMID is tasked with ending more than four years of bloodshed in which more than 200,000 people have died from the combined effects of war, famine and disease in the western Sudanese region, while 2.2 million others have been left homeless. War in Darfur pits black ethnic groups against government troops backed by Arab militias.
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